Canthook

It's time to nail both parties on this "stimulus" nonsense.

Income Tax Cuts Do Not Stimulate The Economy

If someone is unemployed, they're already at a ZERO income tax. What tax cuts do is benefit the people who are already working. What, do you think there are people out there who are turning down jobs because they'd have to pay income tax? Are there people out there who are turning down raises and promotions because they'd have to pay income taxes?

On April 15, most people want to figure out a way to pay less income tax. The other 364 days of the year, they're doing all they can to pay more income tax, by earning more income.

Well, There's a LITTLE Stimulus

Yes, giving someone cash will stimulate the economy, if they spend it, or if they invest it. Someone who is paying income tax is more likely to stash it in the bank. That's not the worst thing in the world - but if you want to turn around the economy, that money really ought to be invested in something that will increase income or reduce expenses.

Educational assistance for the disabled and for the poor should do exactly that. It makes more sense than giving some well-off family money that they use to buy a foreign-made flat-screen TV.

Shovel-Ready Doesn't Make Sense, Either

If a project is shovel-ready, it means that either it was going to get done anyway, in which case, you're not actually doing anything to the economy, you're just taking credit for what someone else already was doing, or else it wasn't going to get done because someone had the good sense to kill the project before spending all that money, in which case, it's still a bad idea.

There's an old joke about going to visit Grandma at the nursing home. The food here, she says, is terrible, it's inedible, it's like they are giving us poison. And what's more, she says, the portions are so small! That's the GOP's position on the stimulus package.

If It's A Good Idea Today, It's A Good Idea Tomorrow

The GOP leaders are complaining that the stimulus package spends too much money - and what's more, most of it won't get spent right away. Well, hell's bells, folks, do you want to spend money like a drunken sailor, or don't you?

I think it was in Pogo that someone invented a backwards calendar, because there's nothing so urgent today that it won't be urgenter tomorrow. By running the calendar backwards, we eliminate the urgency. Well, that's obviously not entirely true. If you can't get into the bathroom when it's really urgent, pretty soon it doesn't make much difference how long it takes.

So Let's Do It Right

We need relief for the people are suffering most. We don't want a lot of relief, because people who are not feeling any pain aren't encouraged to do something along the lines of solving the problem for themselves. We need people to start businesses, not just for their immediate needs, but also to provide wealth for this country for a good long time. Small businesses create jobs; big business destroys them.

So we need to solve the problem of health insurance being tied to your job. That will also solve the problem of many manufacturers, for whom health care costs are a big factor in being competitive. The big companies are going to fail soon enough; we don't need anyone pushing them off the cliff.

But mostly, we need politicians to stop trying to solve the problems of 2009 with the solutions of 1930 and the solutions of 1947. The problems we have today are different, and the solutions need to be different, too.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
education - health care - HR-1 - shovel-ready - stimulus - tax cuts