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8 years ago
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
To Stimulus or Not to Stimulus
The stimulus jargon sounds like bad rap lyrics to me, but apparently it's our future. It's our children and grandchildren's future too. Dart Guy, not surprisingly, is against the stimulus, not only because he can't stand the sight of the Barack Obama coin permanently burned into the screen of a one of the home shopping network channels, but because he fears the ultimate in excess. He believes it may overshoot the mark and leave a legacy of debt--even more colossal than our current legacyof debt--to our zealous warrior children, Destructo and Spitfire. (About a third of the American public support the package currently in Congress) If, against all odds, these children grow up to become productive members of society and bless us with grandchildren, they may pass, at least a portion of the debt on to their own unsuspecting offspring. I am certainly not a Great Economic Mind--I have trouble remembering to pay the water bill most months--so I can not even begin to unravel the intricacies or decipher the impact of the Great Stimulus Puzzle ahead of us. What is clear to me, though, is that we have a lot of work to do, one way or another, and it may take a healthy dose of good, old-fashioned, American Pioneer Spirit to achieve success, as well as require an undetermined amount of natural, minimally processed, non-hydrogenated, organic, green tea-containing salve to ease the sting of the Bite.
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First off, great blog!
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I think I'm with you, Cher, but there's still some things I honestly don't get: when Bush's administration gave away hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations, banks, and other Wall Street entities, conservatives seemed to trust that it was an investment in America (though as the last weeks have played out, we've seen that at least a substantial portion of those billions was given out by the receiving companies in "retention awards" otherwise known as bonuses--who would've thought?--to retiring CEOs, etc.), but when Obama's administration seeks to dole out billions to give regular Americans jobs through school and road construction and other public works projects (similar to the proven techniques FDR employed in ending the Great Depression) it suddenly becomes Socialism. How does this make sense?
I really don't understand how helping the rich elite with our tax dollars is okay, but helping out our public school kids is somehow a step toward Stalinist Communism (not your argument, but one espoused by today's vocal Republican minority).
To give a real example: the bank that holds my car loan was "bailed out" with my tax money for my loan even though I'm current and have never missed a payment, yet I still have to pay the balance (which means they're getting paid twice--with my money!).
In the short-term, we're going to have to lay-off tens of thousands of teachers and state workers because we don't have the tax revenue to pay them (the governor refuses to raise taxes on those making over a million dollars a year, while drastically cutting money for public education--but then again, when's the last time a teacher gave $100K to a political campaign?). On top of everything else, we in California are some of the lucky few who pay more federal taxes than the federal government reimburses us for in social services (and that's with all the illegal immigrants here!). Talk about it being time for a Tea Party!
It seems to me that we already have a socialist system in place, it's just that it helps those at the top stay at the top instead of helping those who really need it.
--Micah--
ok...you are right cher...i actually do agree with micah on most of the points...but when it becomes the socialist system that helps those at the top isn't that called communism? just wondering? :) i think that it is just a very difficult situation to fix...no one really has a good answer right now...bailouts may not be the answer...i honestly don't know what is....it is a scary situation for our kids
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