Recently the government passed The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (The stimulus bill) catchy title eh? The projected cost on it’s face is $780 Billion dollars. The way it was sold to the American taxpayer is that it would save or create 3.6 Million jobs. If this much money is at stake and this many people’s lives are at stake shouldn’t someone ask some questions? After all, if you assume there are 300 Million people in the United States, which works out to $2600 for every man woman and child. Since there are six people in my household, I think I should be able to ask what I am getting for my $15,600. At the same time, that works out to $216,666 per job created or saved. Shouldn’t we ask how the government accounts for a job saved? A job created, that seems relatively easy to account for, a job saved, that seems “squishier”. Finally, wasn’t there a cheaper method of saving or creating these jobs?
First of all, what’s in it for me. After all, I am employed, gotten as much education as I can, worked hard, played by the rules, not taken on too much debt (though my wife would argue that last point) why should the government take $15,600 from my family and give it to people who aren’t employed, haven’t worked on their education, don’t work hard, haven’t played by the rules, have taken on too much debt. Moreover, if the government takes this money from me to rescue these people this time, what’s to stop them from repeating this bad behavior in the future? Why won’t the government take another $15,600 from me ten years from now when the next bubble bursts and why should I be paying for other people’s bad behavior. Ben Bernanke used the metaphor that if you neighbor’s house is on fire you should help put it out. This doesn’t begin to pass the smell test. First of all, I should help my neighbor, but the government shouldn’t come to my house in the middle of the night, hold a gun to my head and force me to help my neighbor all the while telling me, “thank you for volunteering”. Second, my neighbor has been quietly filling his basement with gasoline, and piling dry brush against his house for the last several years, where is his responsibility? Finally, as I not only am forced to help put out the current fire, and rebuild my neighbor a new house, who is going to take the matches out of his hands so that there is no next time?
Despite the absurd fact that we could just grant $216,666 to the least employed and poorest 3.6 million amongst us and that the net effect would be take them off of the unemployment rolls for 3-5 years and immediately stimulate the economy as they spent the money and that if there was some requirement for them to pay down their mortgage it would help the banks, and this would largely solve the economic crisis. This is one of the reasons that fiscal conservatives have a problem, not that it would work, but because the government isn’t taking this tact. In fact, the approved method is to dole the funds out over a protracted length of time, to projects that various special interest deem worthy, not in an effort to fix the economy, rather in an effort to shore up power and reward political patrons. Rather than being efficient and effective, instead we are left with ineffective, slow and designed for any number of things except efficiently fixing the economy.
Lastly, I hate being lied to and I hate even more that either my fellow countrymen don’t know or don’t care that they are being lied to. That the government lies, is nothing new, that they aren’t taking time to craft credible lies has me more than just frustrated. If the government spends a dollar today for a service that in turn creates a job, someone is employed today that otherwise might not be. But doesn’t that person need a job tomorrow? If there is no market basis for the job that has been created and the government is the only customer that will ever require that job, haven’t we simply permanently expanded government? Can anyone really envision a time when President Obama, or his successor, will ever say, “unemployment is down to 2.5% and since we artificially created 3.6 million jobs in 2009 now we are going to eliminate those jobs to prevent inflation and shrink the size of government?” So, while the cover story is plausible “we want to save or create jobs” the net result is a permanent expansion of government such that a large portion of the $780 Billion will have to become a permanent part of the federal budget to continue to pay for the jobs created by the government that the marketplace doesn’t need. Yet, no politician is saying this…sins of omission I guess.
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