Gore and Obama


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Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, August 06, 2009 at 14:11:48 :

In Reply to: Re: $$$ Lost sales of repair parts posted by Ken Sterrett on Thursday, August 06, 2009 at 12:53:36 :

I'd have an easier time blaming the Democrats in general and those two in particular if some Republicans would have the backbone to stand up and say it's a stupid and wasteful program. Instead, all we get from the Republicans is some whining about how they should have made the program only apply to buying "American" cars. Nobody, but nobody, will say that spending $3 billion of tax money (that's $100 from each person in the country) to destroy perfectly functional vehicles is madness. First they offered everyone an $8000 tax credit towards buying overpriced houses, instead of just letting house prices fall to reasonable levels. Now it's $4500 apiece to junk good cars and trucks. Why doesn't the government at least do the honest thing and just start buying all sorts of new products (maybe anything made in the USA, if they want) and immediately crushing/melting it? Traditionally, it took a war to get the government to "stimulate the economy" by buying stuff and destroying it (look at all the M37s, M35s, helicopters, etc that were dropped into the ocean at the end of the Vietnam war), but now they've figured out how to do it without even having to have a war.

I'm no economist, but it seems like the basic plan for "fixing" the economy is this:

Borrow lots of money from China.

Use the money to either buy expensive useless stuff directly (fighter planes that the Air Force doesn't want, for example) or to somehow pay Americans to buy stuff, and then destroy it.

This supposedly will revive the economy by creating jobs. They could accomplish the same thing by employing people to carry rocks from pile A to pile B, and then from pile B to pile A. The difference is the new system destroys a lot more irreplaceable natural resources in the process.

The last part of this stimulus program is the part nobody has time to think about -- how to pay back the borrowed money. It seems to me there are only two choices -- pay it back or don't pay it back. The first means higher taxes, fewer goodies, and 300 million unhappy people working their butts off to pay off debts for stuff they don't even care about any more. The last time a country did that on a large scale, it was Germany paying its WWI war reparations, and we know what that led to. The second method, the biggest default in the history of the world, would mean no more US borrowing, and maybe even a big war.

This whole situation reminds me of the last hours of a wild party, when the sensible people have gone home but the remainder are trying to keep the booze and the coke going a little while longer so they don't have to believe the party's over and they don't have to start cleaning up the mess. The people finally had enough sense to stop buying stuff they can't afford, and what happens? The government decides to buy it for them.



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