Can people stand by instead of applying leeches to people with the flu?

Technically the wars ended years ago.

As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), the first stimulus package went mostly into paying mortgages, not creating jobs. Plus doing what you stated wouldn't be "employing", it would be giving the unemployed a year's salary, which, going by your username, you wouldn't like much.

Objective with Iraq was to overthrow Saddam Hussein (because he had WMD's, apparently, not because he was a tyrannical dictator) and I guess they accomplished that, but the country's in a worse state than it was before. And the Afghanistan war is far from over...

You still seem to think that what they do won't help the economy. Why do you think that? And I know you're not alone on this, so maybe I'm being really naive.

1. It would be wrong to just pull out of these wars all of a sudden, without ensuring that there's peace and order.
2. How do you know that what they're doing is not helping the economy? And I don't understand the bolded sentence, I'd appreciate it if you could re-word it.
3. I'm sorry, but war and bad economy are long term, and they were caused while Bush was the president. If he's not to blame, then who is? As for the stimulus getting you nothing, how do you know it's got you nothing? How do you know that it wouldn't have been a lot worse right now if it weren't for that?
4. Well, I'm not an economist, and can't explain to you why unemployment is higher than projected. But the guys that propose this stuff are and they probably know what they're talking about. Their plans aren't guaranteed to work. It seems like you think (or would like to think) that they just flush the money down a huge toilet somewhere.

First of all, letting GM (even though American cars suck compared to European and Japanese cars) and other big corporations topple would've been counterproductive, as they all employ a lot of people. And you misunderstand me, I never said that the unemployment is being caused by government not spending money; I only said that something should be done, and if Obama needs money to create more jobs, then so be it.

Your second paragraph... I do not have a perfect understanding of world economy, so I do not know if those suggestions would work. But what makes you think that they haven't been looked over already, and were tossed because they weren't the best option? I'm just curious, but do you suspect that you have corrupt politicians? And about pressuring China, US has no right to police and bully other countries (that's something that Obama seems to understand).

Well hard to think a second stimulus will work because indeed we are attacking the wrong thing. The problem isn't that there isn't enough money flowing around but that most of the money isn't in use that is circulating. We worsened that problem in 2008 by stimulating the financial sector which has worsened the problem.


I can't necessarily say what should be done but I know what the problem is. Too much money in circulation that isn't actually circulating while the value of the dollar goes down because of it. You would think we could fix that but all we have is the most worthless institution in the world.... The Federal Reserve. Need to get rid of that awful thing if you ask me because they only make things worse.


I'd say the best way to keep the economy flowing and therefore jobs flowing is to ensure that money is flowing. Really in theory, distribution of wealth doesn't sound all that bad right now. Of course it has always been the greedy and those with money that have kept the capitalist economy down. Should have let those corporations bust and let the money flow out because of it. Of course our government has too many interests in that of big business and the wealthy. Screws the rest of us because they pay their campaigns that manipulate us into thinking they are doing the right thing.

Messed up system if you ask me but only one we got. Well let the Democrats and Obama do what they want, might not be a good idea, but at least it is something. Better than simply letting the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Maybe the idealist in me actually believes in 2010 that we'll elect the right people, but doubtful. We don't need politicians in this time if you ask me. Need someone who will actually do something and not fearful of not getting reelected.

Austrian mercantilism...oh my.

1. Why not? Afghanistan is horrible given the circumstances, and Iraq has pretty much stabilized. Again, Obama was elected as the guy that'd get us out, not keep us in - a promise he has woefully went against.
2. Did you see the chart Kasz presented? The money is helping some, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem. The problem is not fixable financially, it is only fixable through reforms. When the housing market collapsed (which started this whole mess), do you know why so many people went bankrupt? 66% of all bad loans were by people that should not of had loans in the first place, and had to have a government-backed loan. Congress never resolved these issues because giving money to people that can't use it properly makes them look good. Furthermore, the stimulus did not go entirely to good projects. Where I live, we have two infrastructure projects being funded by the stimulus - millions of dollars - and it is the most worthless projects I have ever seen. They've been worked on for months, and they have not improved anything that needed improvement. Most of the money didn't go towards projects that would create & keep private jobs - they went to creating public jobs which are inefficent and shorter term.
3. Business cycles are partially to blame. Every few decades, you will have financial problems. We've had a financial issue approximately every 10 years - S&L scandle under George Sr., the tech bubble burst under Clinton/Bush, and now this. Things like this do happen. Much of the blame could be placed on government intervention in the late 90s which saw the repeal of the glass-stegall act, and other additions to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1999 which caused more money go to people that simply were not in the position to buy homes.
4. See, the problem is that the people that propose this isn't based off how good of economists they are, but their political clout and relationship to a president. There are some horrible people in office from both Bush (Bernake) and Obama (Geitner) which are making bad claims that are continually proven false. Why didn't we listen to Peter Schiff who predicted this ENTIRE MELTDOWN? They don't flush money down a toilet, but it is certainly mal-invested. With $800 billion USD, we could of done many things that would have ushered America into a new golden age (ala post-WW2), but instead it went to politicians and their constituents. Look at what the bill actually provided. For example, we could have invested in new power-generation technologies to wean us off unclean energy types, therefore negating the need for that extra $$$ to Cophenagen. But our politicians chose not to. We could of invested that money into interest-free business loans for American entreprenurs.

Lets go over some of the successes of the stimulus:

• $257 million dollars for Brookhaven research institute. It did not go for research. It went for maitenance and upgrading various systems at their lab. It created 25 jobs, or $10,000,000 per job.
• $4.4 billion to the state of California. This money retained 19,000 overpaid jobs that California shouldn't have. In the midst of a financial crisis what do they do? Get money from the feds to prop up a horrible, broken system. Each job has cost almost $25,000 - do you really think these public jobs (mostly CA schoolteachers which are the highest paid, worst resulting teachers in America) are worth it? I do not. 
• $4,400 for new trashcans at my local lake
• 12 contractor jobs for $250,000 in my county -  not new ones, just keeping old ones.

I could go on and on. The point is that you can look up their website at recovery.gov and see where the money went - I would venture to say that half of it has gone toward projects that will create and retain new jobs. If that is the case, why not cut the stimulus down by half and only spend it on new jobs?

1. You are very wrong about letting GM die being counterproductive. Yes, GM employs a lot of people. The problem is that their employees - from CEOs to line workers - are collectively doing a very poor job at what they are. Other car companies, US and foreign, are making cars that are better, more efficent, more reliable, and other things. Because of this (as well as too high overhead thanks to their old, poor manufacturing models) they cannot continue to work under their current model, and must be reorganized through Chapter 13 to sell off bad assets, and let other, better, car manufacturers get their employees and plants (after all, they would not all shut down - there are companies that do a far better job with labor allocation.

Lets put it this way: If a video game company had a knack for making horrible games that no one wanted, and a video game system that sucked, should they be given money from a government souly on the basis that they empolyed people? If money is given to them, it doesn't allow them to make better games. It merely props up a bad company. GM is no different. If they went under, companies such as Toyota (which employs many people) and Ford would have purchased the plants, hired the employees, and ran them better. But that didn't happen - since the UAW is one of the biggest political backers, they bailed the companies out keeping bad leaders employed. I'll give you another example of this atrocity: when the bailout happened, and GM had to re-organize their healthcare coverage for employees, guess who got to keep their coverage? Only the UAW employees. Other barganing groups such as AC-Delco had their entire coverage stripped, leaving them with nothing. Why did this happen? Becuase the UAW is larger, and forced the leadership to allow coverage only to their units - politics at its finest (at least a chapter 13 would have made this equal).

1. Yes, we have corrupt politicians. The Chinese are one of the largest groups of investors into American enterprises- don't you think that some politicians have a lot to loose if they make China mad? This isn't about bossing China around - this is about making China become honest. Here is the problem: China, due to government type, can deflate its currency, meaning that the true value of their money is worth less than it should be. This means that any company doing business in China can spend less money and get more products, causing many jobs to be relocated to China. If their currency was valued at a correct rate, it would cost companies 10-20% more to do business there. If this happened, then more jobs would come back to America since having them in China would be costlier. Its not a matter of if they should boss China around, it is a matter of right and wrong: China is fixing their currency to give them an unfair advantage that no other country that large does. 

@Zucas - Hopefully Ron, or his son Rand Paul run for bigger offices in 2010. Otherwise, we may not get the right people in the government.