I don't think there's any doubt that our economy in 2008 needed a little pick-me-up. Right now it could use some tonic. What's important is how the stimulus is applied.
Taking a wide-angle look at our economy, the biggest outlays of the last ten years have been the trillion dollars spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the half trillion (or more) each year that we spend on the Pentagon, beyond war spending. No wonder we are all poor here at home.
We won't dwell on that. Let's make a list of all the 775 (at least) military bases we have outside the country. Prioritize them in order of importance to our welfare. Close a few of the least important, and bring the soldiers (or airmen or sailors or whatever they are) home. We will put them to work right here. They are public employees and we have a job for them.
The Civilian Conservation Corps of Franklin Roosevelt's time was a hybrid of Army and federally-hired civilians. I would like to see a hybrid of these soldiers brought back from closed bases and members of the electricians union. Let the trained electricians teach and supervise groups of soldiers. Housing could be at bases in the U.S.
The job would be installing the electrical hardware in people's basements that is a necessary component of a family's home power production system. The cost of this component is often the stopper in a middle-class family's decision to invest in solar panels, small wind turbines, or other means of energy capture.
Instead of awarding military contracts to U.S. factories to make destructive devices (bombs, drones, warplanes) let us spend our public money on contracts to U.S. factories to make the electrical hardware that our soldiers will be installing.
Communities with at least 1000 applications will be put on the list first come, first served for the installation teams to come to their area. Small communities can band together to meet the 1000 application requirement.
I am especially inspired to see the courage of Ron Paul to stand behind the policy of closing foreign bases. Even more inspired to see how many supporters he has that see the sense in what he says. I don't agree with everything he says but closing foreign bases and ending unnecessary wars is so big and so basic to our future that it trumps just about everything else.
Let's stop being the world police and invest in OUR best interests.
ReplyDeleteInvesting in renewable energy research and making it affordable is a win- win situation for our country.
Stimulus comes from keynesian theory. There is a problem with how our government is running it. Keynes theory is based on the premise that governments run surpluses during good years which can then work through stimulus projects and tax cuts to "prime the pump." Stimulus through debt is nothing but taxation of future generations or, more immediately, the collapse of the dollar when our growing debt fails to be bought by foreign countries in Treasury auctions. Real inflation measures approximately 10%+ if you check shadowstats which measures inflation the way it was measured in the 70's and 80's before our government decided to fudge their books. Inflation is a hidden tax on the poor and middle class. Deflation generally supports the poor and middle class who benefit from the lower price of goods and services. Who is hedged from inflation? Rich people who park a substantial portion of their fortune in metals while they work in conjunction with our government and the federal reserve to manipulate the markets. My other main problem with stimulus is that it ends up being the government that decides what projects are worthy of taking on. The projects are largely awarded to unions instead of the most competitive bidder. The free market and businesses are far better at direction capital to its proper place. At best we can hope for a benevolent and intelligent government that will use our money for proper purposes. At worst....well we can already see what is coming to be when you see the worst that can happen.
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