Amy Jewer

O what joy to be loved everywhere,

Tops in affability,

Running still for the title of

Mr. Popularity.

- Give people money (which is what we should have done in the beginning rather than giving it to banks and wall street because the corporations will ultimately be getting the money from the people anyway.)
- People will save the money rather than spend it. (This is most likely what will happen.)
- Prices will deflate in order to attract customers (and it’s about time.. personally I think it’s ridiculous to pay $9.00+ for a movie. Stop paying actors millions of dollars.. no one deserves that much money in a single year, no one.)
- Jobs will be cut due to lack of customers, and this is exactly what Obama means by ‘it will get worse before it gets better.’ BUT, this will not be a bad thing indefinitely. People will have received stimulus money and will hopefully have saved it. Maybe more small businesses will appear. Maybe people will go back to school and make better lives for themselves by obtaining their ideal career. It will inevitably get worse before it gets better, but with deflated prices and extra income in our pockets, the economy *will* start to recover. That will be inevitable, too.
- And the most important point of all is the message Obama is putting out there. ‘Help me, help you.’ Why are we so blind to this obvious act of compassion? Why do we desire a President who shuns us rather than helps us? We need to embrace change and give it a chance.

We need to stop convincing ourselves and others that an economic plan will absolutely not work. We need to start having HOPE that it CAN work. If we all contribute to making it work, rather than sitting back with a disbelieving attitude and expecting it to not really work, then it will help the plan work for EVERYONE. Do your part to be patriotic for the economy.

Where has hope gone in this country?
I want to say.. I still believe.

Unfortunately, what you are not told is:
a) we can put unemployed to work by decreasing the hours in the work week or encouraging single income households, and
b) economic growth has no correlation to the economic well-being of our country’s households so economic growth is useless as a goal that should be sought.

If you need an expanded argument here it is. I’ll begin with an example for a): Let’s say that you work 40 hours a week in the field producing 40 pounds of food. You only need 35 pounds per week to survive but you also lose 5 pounds of food per week at the local gambling casino. Of that 5 pounds, the wealthy casino owner keeps 1 pound as profit and pays the card dealer the remaining 4 pounds. One day you decide to stop gambling to begin to accumulate food for retirement and the card dealer becomes unemployed. Even if you decide to give the ex-card dealer the 4 pounds of food he was getting before, you are still better off by not gambling because you still have an extra 1 pound of food. Of course, we all know that it is not good for our society to give capable people food for doing nothing so you decide to tell the ex-card dealer that you will give him 4 pounds of food for doing 4 hours of your work in the field. Now, not only do you have the extra 1 pound of food but you have 4 extra hours of free time. The only person that ends up with less is the wealthy casino owner and perhaps that is why you never hear about the 35 hour work week option. Now, imagine if you multiply this example by as many unnecessary products and services that we consume in this country.

About b): Let’s say that I am the employee of the daycare that watches your kids while you are working and you’re the employee at the company I hire to clean my house while I am at the daycare. This activity is represented by a number called GDP (which unfortunately has come to represent the “economy”). Now, if I decide that I want to clean my own house and you decide you want to watch your own kids, both of us have not lost a thing but GDP has decreased. In fact, we are financially better off because we keep the profit that our employers had kept for themselves.

Of course, you may say that my logic is ridiculous but you can’t say that they are wrong. You may think that my examples don’t accurately reflect our society but I think they do.
In Wisconsin, we get a tax credit if both spouses work (whether or not they have kids). Enticements such as this credit drive up the supply of labor and, therefore, drives down wages which neutralizes the tax credit. The second job actually requires additional spending by the household which neutralizes the additional income which is why the second job needs the subsidy to seem economically attractive to the household. You can read about this dilemma in books such as “The Two Income Trap”.

So that is one of thousands of points of wasted consumption that provides no actual benefit to our households but only generates lots of transactions for the wealthy to profit from.

It wasn’t Wall Street’s greed alone that caused this; there was greed all over: from homeowners, investment property speculators, pension fund managers, mortgage brokers, bankers, politicians….

I trade and I can say I’d have no problem with this.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The huge bubble of illusionary wealth created by artificially inflated home and stock prices is what ended the last recession and is also exactly what is responsible for the current ruined world economy.

WAKE UP you idiot Republicans!

Secondly, instead of sending a check to all Americans, couldn’t we send a gift/credit card with a limit of $500 on each one. The government picks up the tab paying the monthly minimum with interest to help the banks. It insures that citizens MUST use the money to purchase and not sock it away. It could come from many major banks to spread it around. Just a thought.

I hope that Mr. Obama does not miss this similar opportunity to rally the American people at the grass-roots and local level. To use his uniquely optimistic opportunity to move this economy from a credit economy to a cash economy. For folks (and corporations) to understand that it is their own personal responsibility to live within their means. It may mean that the downturn may last a bit longer and that we may not see an “exuberant economy” again. But it will serve our children, – my daughter a brighter future.

And I say this as somebody who lost his job.

How different is what we’re talking about with regard to the stimulas plan and our ongoing deficit spending with Madoff’s ponzi scheme? I see an eary parallel with how our government borrows and spends $ and how Madoff operated his so called investment firm. Isn’t our monetary system, as controlled by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury basically one big ponzi scheme? We have to continue to borrow money $ to pay off the investors that bought bonds previously. Isn’t that what Madoff did. When the $ stops flowing in (from China, Japan, private investors, etc…) doesn’t the whole system collapse just like Madoff’s scheme? What happens to the dollar when this happens?

Thanks in advance for considering my question.