Lane Montgomery
Monday, January 12, 2009
Voluntarily Broke
We're on a spending freeze. I know they say that lack of consumer spending is the reason for the recession, but if we keep spending and one of us loses a job, the government isn't going to bail us out.
I wonder what difference it would have made if instead of giving $700 billion to the banks, they gave that to workers? I heard on NPR that the U.S. workforce is around 150 million. That would mean that each one of those people would get over $4,500. Talk about a stimulus!
Paul Krugman has been saying that the new stimulus should have more of a focus on long-term solutions for unemployment instead of tax breaks for businesses and tax rebates for people.
From what I've been hearing, a lot of people (including Krugman) have been saying the stimulus isn't enough, and probably should be something closer to $1.5 or $2 trillion. I think we should implement the package as it is now and going forward implement more jobs programs, green energy, and energy efficiency (all of which will create jobs here while the economy recovers). This would probably bring us much closer to the filling the gap in how much this recession is costing the economy.
But like I said, I don't have a lobbyist in Washington.
