The Absurd Report

Some Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls are preaching economic doom and gloom, disappearing middle class, and failing health care industry. What’s their solution? The short answer is give them more control over our lives. Baltimore’s political satirist, the late H.L. Mencken, explained this strategy, saying,

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The imaginary hobgoblin this time is the threat of an oncoming recession, even though it is by no means clear that the U.S. economy is in a recession. To head off a recession, politicians, including President Bush, are calling for a stimulus package.

Before we talk about stimulus packages, let’s get one question out of the way: Is there any evidence for the existence of a Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy? Most grown-ups would probably answer no and ask, “Williams, this is a serious issue. Why are you talking about silly things like Santas and Tooth Fairies?” The reason is quite simple. Let’s look at it.

The White House proposal is to give individuals and households tax rebates ranging from $800 to $1,600 respectively. Congressional Democrats, in addition to tax rebates, want a stimulus package that targets the poor through increases in food stamps and greater unemployment benefits. The details of different stimulus packages aren’t as important as where the money is coming from. You can bet the rent money it won’t come from Santa or the Tooth Fairy.

There are three ways government can get the money for a stimulus package. It can tax, borrow or inflate the currency by printing money. If government taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another who pays the tax, who is unstimulated and has less money to spend. If government borrows the money, it’s the same story. This time the unstimulated person is the lender who has less money to spend. If government prints money, creditors, and then everyone else, are unstimulated. As my colleague Russell Roberts said in a NPR broadcast, “It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing — the water in the shallow end doesn’t get any deeper.”

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics.

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More Absolutely Absurd Stimulus Package Nonsense

SideBear: When the Founding Fathers wrote of a government By the People and For the People they made one serious error in judgment.

They assumed that the present day idiots in Washington would understand that they where referring to the legal citizens of this country.

And I certainly can forgive their error in judgment, for who could possibly have envisioned way back then that by the 21st Century Washington would be a place totally void of common sense.

This blurb from the Corner Blog…

The stimulus bill (HR5140), to be marked up in the Senate Finance Committee today, says “nonresident alien individuals” are ineligible for payments. But from the IRS page defining what that means, it looks like illegal aliens count as “resident aliens” and so would indeed be getting checks from the Treasury Department. In fact, someone who’s looked at the issue says that even aliens who’ve been deported, but who were in the United States for the required number of days last year, would qualify for checks. So now we’re going to be sending “stimulus” checks abroad, too?

Albert Einstein once said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

I would suggest a third party here…Washington and I am sure.

health care, U.S. economy, President Bush, tax rebates, illegal aliens   

Tags: Economy

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