Feb11 |
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Top 5 reasons I’m not screaming for or against the stimulus1. My understanding of economics is shallower than I’d like it to be — something I should remedy with one of those MIT online courses or something. I have a general idea of what Keynesianism involves (and there was a great overview last weekend on This American Life) but I don’t feel that my knowledge is detailed enough to weigh in on the topic in any way that advances the conversation. So my inclination is to stay quiet. 2. I’m also resisting the temptation to give automatic approval to anything done by President Not Bush Obama. Looking around at some of the commentary by people who — I suspect — don’t know any more about economics than I do, I’m pretty sure that a lot of it is knee-jerk us-versus-themness going on by both sides. But that’s a really stupid reason to support or oppose anything — particularly something that costs this much. 3. Plus I’m kind of worried about our national habit of deficit spending in both good times and bad. We’ve been hearing for my entire life that the growing federal debt is a burden that will someday have to be paid down by our children. I wonder now if we’re not the children we’ve been waiting for. And maybe it’s time to reconcile the way we’ve been living with what we can afford. That will probably be a painful reconciliation no matter when it happens, so maybe it’s time to get it over with. 4. On the other hand things are kind of painful now, and getting more painful all the time. And while I don’t want my five-month-old son to have to someday bear the painful burden of my generation’s failure to make tough choices, well, I also don’t want him to have to bear that burden now, either. And while I don’t know if the stimulus package will make everything feel good right now, I suspect it will make things feel less bad. Still, I also have a sneaking suspicion it’s going to hurt a lot sooner or later. Neither option is enticing. 5. Maybe I’m a bad blogger. There are plenty of outlets to follow the stimulus debates. There are plenty of outlets that reflect your point of view. This blog, though, unfortunately, probably isn’t one of them. Which kind of sucks, since it’s the biggest political story going right now. But there’s no way I can offer a clean, consistent and informative point of view on this topic. So for the most part, I’m probably not going to try. |
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PhillyNow | PW Style | Make Major Moves | The Trouble with Spikol
Joel, I agree with your take on this. Not sure of all the complexities (I’m not smart enough to) nor the implications. One thing I do know is that I don’t like spending money to solve a spending problem…if that’s what it is. I guess I’m not good at commenting.
It is precisely a spending problem, and it has been occurring continuously for the past 70 or so years, and not the last four, or eight, or some number divisible evenly by four years ago.
Sooner or later someone is going to have to take the painful step: to tell my soft-headed countrymen that when they want health “coverage” (as opposed to insurance; “coverage” meaning absolutely every single penny’s worth of any expense that may possibly be health-related paid for by us at 100% — and the obligation to Medicare recipients is right now equal to 25 Iraq Wars), a “safety net” (State-funded retirement for all, paying people for 30 years of work for 30 years of… not working), the super-best infrastructure, free Wi-Fi in every city, 500 cable channels, etc., etc., that we don’t have the money.
As we’re now discovering, we never did.
What we’re calling money is A) another country’s money, or B) created from thin air, of no real value, on someone’s say-so.
The debt will indeed come due. Whether it comes in the form of generations of hard times or in the form of being taken by force (by someone) is yet to be decided.
At some point, as the producers (people who make or provide things of lasting value) are outnumbered by those who do not produce anything — and as they demand greater slices of the producers’ pies, the producers will crack and one of the following things will happen: A) We will all fritter our time away in idle pursuits a la the Roman Empire, B) The two groups will be set against each other in mortal combat a la the French Revolution, C) the former group will rise against an aristocratic government that capriciously expropriates its resources (has that happened in the history of this country?), D) we will continue to spend money, accrue debt, and print money until our currency is worthless and our debt cannot be paid, in which case it will be taken by force a la the Weimar Republic, or E) something I haven’t thought of yet, including actually fixing the problem, owning up to our mistakes, and not repeating them.
Personally, I’m hoping for E). But the first four are far more likely.