Tuesday, February 10, 2009

stimulus

They had 400 million dollars worth of rubbers in the original Stimulus bill?
I can't think of anything LESS stimulating than one of them thangs! I perked up when I thought I heard the President say the words "shaking asses" last night. But no, it was in reference to banking and "shaky assets". I know I'm a dumbass, but will somebody tell me how tax cuts are gonna create jobs...and soon?
Hey! here's something stimulating...
Come see the Heavy Beat Outfit this Sairdy night at Slim's!
Bring your Valentine out and git her drunk!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since you asked:

The thinking behind tax cuts as a method of stimulating the economy is that putting money in the hands of consumers can be done on a practically instant basis: The tax cuts are built into the withholding tables and employers immediately start paying over more net take-home pay (which of course costs them nothing, as subsequent remittance of the lesser withholdings exactly offsets their increased payout in take-home). People then do what they do, and viola!: there is a surge of beer, milk, cigarette, and lottery ticket purchases in small communities all over the land! The resulting surge in sales taxes helps the states and counties quickly, too.

I didn't watch Pres Obama's speech last night, nor the "rebuttal", but it's been pretty widely discussed that stimulus spending by the Federal government, in and of itself, was not sufficient to cause recovery here in the 1930s nor in Japan in the 1990s. It's also been widely reported that some of the House-planned stimulus spending is pure pork, an example being some $88 million for Milwaukee public schools--a school system with a declining enrollment, 15 empty schools, and zero plans to build schools (at least, before the thought of stimulus money floated through the air).

There are lots of ways to look at this stuff. I'm glad for the discussion and debate--it proves everybody has their thinking caps on!

FB

TA said...

But That's IF you HAVE a job. Right?

Anonymous said...

Correct. It works most quickly if you already have a job. If you don't, the theory is the guy at the convenience store will hire you within a week or two to help with restocking the shelves with the aformentioned beer, milk, and cigs. Shortly after that, the beer, milk, and cig distributors need more warehouse and delivery people, then the beer, milk, and cig producers have to hire, and on up the line.

Economics is really fairly straightforward, I believe.

FB

Anonymous said...

I wish you would bring your Valentine!!! I want to see her. We finally found a sitter. A real date night.