As I indicated in a previous post, when it comes to matters involving anything vaguely economical, my intelligence drops to the level of a starfish. Back in October, I expressed my frustration over not understanding how the economic collapse happened. Now I'm equally befuddled by the prospective solutions, so I will make yet another desperate plea:Would somebody please explain the economic stimulus debate to me in 500 words or less?
As my befuddled economically-challenged brain understands it, the premise behind the stimulus bill makes sense. During times of high unemployment, people don't spend anything because they want to hoard what they have. This is not good for the economy because people have to spend money in order to make the economy go. With people saving their money because they think they're going to die, the economy starts to go down the shitter even further resulting in even higher unemployment. In order to alleviate these concerns, the government is going to spend a shitload of money at once to kind of jump-start the economy so that it doesn't stagnate.
If a gold star is warranted for being somewhere in the ball park on this summary, I'd appreciate being given that little reward. If I'm way off base, I'll take a very sensual spanking.
More conservative advocates want the government stimulus to instead come in the form of tax breaks for individuals. I do not understand this plan. Wouldn't the amount that each person receives be relatively small? Given such a small tax break, doesn't it seem more likely that individual taxpayers will simply put that money into savings (given the dire economic situation) instead of spending it? All that people hear right now is that they need to SAVE SAVE SAVE their money! If they get a tax break, isn't that exactly what they'll do?
I really enjoy telling people that I think they're stupid even when I don't understand their argument (makes me feel good about myself), but in this case I'm not going to do that. I truly don't believe that those people who support the tax breaks are incompetent, so I want to know what the reasoning is behind that notion. I'm looking to you, brave and discerning FoxNews viewers. What's the reasoning behind the conservative plan?
I rather like the people on TV who claim that a depression is necessary and that we shouldn't do anything. First, apathy comes naturally to me, so I'm totally on board. Second, the vast majority of people don't want to listen to these negative Nancies, so I root for the underdog. And third, there's a certain poetry to two decades of prosperity being rewarded with a giant economic comeuppance. With my twenty years spent in school receiving excellent grades and being told that I'd be going places in my life and then languishing in unemployment forever, I see my life as a microcosm for American society as a whole. Misery loves company.
So let's play a little game we're going to call: EDUCATE THE ECONOMIC SIMPLETON. The winner will get to have Carl Kasell record the greeting on his or her home answering machine.
(If you get that obscure reference, you're probably an economically-challenged humanities major like me.)
My brain is like an open vessel awaiting your soluble and quenching truth.
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The Economy: Once you understand it, you've probably overdosed on LSD.
3 comments:
I always wondered what would happen when even Wikipedia was deemed too intellectual for the masses.
Thankfully, technology stepped up to the plate.
Actually, you pretty much got it right. It's designed to try to help prevent more disaster and to try to jumpstart things. So, for example with unemployment money, states are facing the possibility they'll run out of it, especially when more people starting hitting up unemployment. So that's supposed to help them not run out of money and result in an even bigger catastrophe. Some measures seem to be about just buying things to keep businesses going. Or creating jobs so people can work for a little while and not have to use unemployment.
The Republicans are opposed to this in principle because of the spending (funny how they never peeped at all the spending Bush did over the last eight years). And because they've lost their rudder and are trying to find political relevance again. I'm sure you've heard of the Republican governors who pledged not to take any stimulus money. They're bluffing, of course, that would be political suicide. The only point they have is that accepting some of the stimulus money requires them to make changes in their state laws, and some of them are concerned they won't have the resources to continue doing what Washington is asking them to provide for once the temporary stimulus is over. It's a good point, but not one they have bothered to explain well.
I think it's a nice bandage. But I do think we're headed for a Depression, and I do think that some of this is simply inevitable. We cannot go on consuming at the rate we have been--it's not possible to sustain it. And so when it collapses, yes, jobs are going to be lost and probably permanently. We're going to contract as an economy--and we need to. Nobody wants to talk about that, but that's the future, man. We're going to all have to downsize. No more easy credit, no more massive amounts of junk. And that's going to make some jobs go away forever--but they NEED to go away, they're bad for us. We need to face this reality and make a plan for dealing with it, not just try to keep patching it up until we can no longer hold it together.
The only real question here is would you really rather have the gold star or the sensual spanking?
Oh, I believe the sensual spanking is now preferable. :)
That was very helpful actually, and I think the inevitable and beneficial contraction of the economy makes sense, but the permanent loss of the JOBS themselves seems like a bad thing to me. There's always work to be done. I do think one of the good things about an inevitable depression is that the jobs that are created out of it might not be in the service of completely unnecessary industries.
The American public will always have demands (in the economic sense), but hopefully those demands will evolve from treadmills for dogs to education reform or something even more socially beneficial like blogging. :)
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