STIMULUS

Obama didn’t call it a ‘Stimulus’ this time. Instead he proposed a JOBS bill, which is an acronym: Just Obama Blowing Smoke.

Allegedly, the economy needs another stimulus because I am not buying a new car today. I would be buying a new car today, except for the fact that I bought a new car two years ago. I didn’t actually need or want a new car two years ago. However, the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program stimulated me to trade in my perfectly good useable older American made car for a new Japanese made hybrid model.

Now where was the national economic benefit in that? A car that had two years of life left in it went straight to the crusher. And to replace it, I was steered to a foreign made vehicle in order to meet the requirements of the government incentive. It made sense financially to those individuals that participated in the program (better the money go to me than another guy that doesn’t need it), but it didn’t make a lick of financial sense for the country.

So it’s no wonder ‘stimulus’ is a negatively charged word. It was a waste of taxpayer money which created a temporary commotion at the cost of much greater long term losses. It was an example of the old proverbial ‘digging your hole deeper’.

Putting a new label on a failed program isn’t fooling anyone. But that is not all of it. This time it comes with a huge tax increase. Funny that some folks in Washington can’t figure out that rather than adding value, routing money through Washington siphons off value. Well, no. It’s not funny. It doesn’t work.