Right, so the economy sucks. Corporations like GM and Ford have apparently been horribly mismanaged, high oil prices kicked everyone in the ass, banks aren't lending, credit is tight, and it seems that everyone in America has so completely over-extended themselves that they can't pay for the credit and loans they do have. So, foreclosures and repossessions are up, the job market is tight because the money isn't flowing, and everyone and their uncle is worried about losing both their homes and their jobs. Because the economy sucks. Okay, got it.
And the only answer we have, it seems, is for the Government to throw billions of dollars at the same corporations and banks that screwed the economy up in the first place. The same corporations and banks that took the first round of "bailout" money from the Bush Administration, which was given in order to loosen up the credit markets and get them flowing again . . . and held on to it. Except, of course, to give their senior executives millions of dollars in bonuses and cozy evenings with pop stars.
Which we are about to do again, sending the national debt to stratospheric heights and bumping it to an incredible 15% of the GNP. Folks . . . you all do realize, don't you, that this is money the Government does not have. Obama's bailout money, like Bush's bailout money, is entirely deficit spending.
Now, for this plan to work - meaning, we don't bankrupt the nation and we don't saddle our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with a bill they won't be able to pay either, the present Administration is forecasting - well, really, desperately hoping - that the stimulus package will result in the economy growing by 4% per year starting in 2010.
Of course, the GAO, which is non-partisan and has no political axe to grind, using the same data the Administration uses, projects that, at best, the economy will only grow at somewhere between 1.6% to 2.5% per year for the next four years.
Oops.
Split the difference. Say both sides are wrong, but be generous and say that the stimulus encourages the economy to grow at a rate of 3% per year for the next four years. We're still at an "Oops," because anything less than the magic 4% growth rate means we have a problem with our present deficit spending on the stimulus, quite apart from all the porky earmarks that got tossed in, that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy and that Ms. Pelosi insists will stay in the bill.
But what would happen, I wonder, if the Government instead just dispensed with the idea of the stimulus, and gave a one-time, tax-free grant of $1 million dollars to every American citizen.
Before you all start screaming about "socialism," any other "-ism" or redistributing the wealth, think about it. The idea is to get the economy going by getting consumer spending going, by getting the credit and lending markets to open up. What better way to do that than to give the consumers the money to spend? I mean, if you're going to go for Keynesian economics, then why not go to the logical conclusion of that theory?
Sure, there would be those who would take their million and sit on it, and sure, the same yutzes who screwed up their corporations and banks, who started this mess, would get their million from the Government, just like everyone else. But there would also be plenty of people who take the million and do what people tend to do with money - spend it.
Which is the whole point of the present stimulus bill.
There are something a little over 300 million of us. One million dollars to each citizen . . . seems like a bargain to me.
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