On the fifth anniversary of the "stimulus," it's not unfair to ask what precisely it stimulated. You can see pretty effective breakdowns of ARRA funds here and here, itemized and tabulated six ways from Sunday. There are descriptions of plenty of beneficial projects.
But it's also important to look at results, to ask why, for example, if over $98 billion was spent on transportation and infrastructure, so many of our bridges and highways are on the verge of collapsing. Why, after spending nearly $19 bn on health care, is the health care system still such a monumental clusterfuck, an issue that essentially works out to a 20% productivity tax, where wealth is extracted and siphoned upward for shareholders and exec bonuses.
Speaking of extracting and siphoning, how is it that after putting over $41 bn in stimulus money toward "energy," presumably at least some token efforts toward conservation and efficiency, the best this administration can point to is fracking, and pipelining tar sand bitumen? Does this sound like a tremendous bang for your hard-earned tax dollar?
Surely jobs were created and preserved by these and other efforts, so even as a stopgap there is some efficacy. But I said it at the start, and nothing has happened to change my mind -- at least some of the stimulus should have gone to households, rich and poor alike, some flat amount across the board, say $50,000 per household. You would have seen an aggregation of activities centered around three main goals -- spending, saving, and eliminating debt.
That last one is the killer, as our debt ratio has skyrocketed, with no way to get it back down to where the average person can save, or even have discretionary income to put back into the economy. This is a situation that I strongly and sincerely believe is not accidental or coincidental. It is by design -- the owners continue their accrual without missing a beat, while the rest barely manage to hang on, making them even more desperate to cling to whatever straws are left, to accept the few crumbs that still fall from the table.
It's a patronage system, so the stimulus pelf was going to patrons regardless of which party supported what policy. But imagine for just a second how much more successful it would have been to have at least part of that money go directly to taxpayers and consumers, rather than finance weasels who pulled the money at 0%, hoarded most and lent the rest to the peons at interest -- or just rigging the interest rates in the first place. Nice racket you got there.
{Update 2/21/14 20:00 PST: Looks like The Krugster had the same bright idea there.]
But it's also important to look at results, to ask why, for example, if over $98 billion was spent on transportation and infrastructure, so many of our bridges and highways are on the verge of collapsing. Why, after spending nearly $19 bn on health care, is the health care system still such a monumental clusterfuck, an issue that essentially works out to a 20% productivity tax, where wealth is extracted and siphoned upward for shareholders and exec bonuses.
Speaking of extracting and siphoning, how is it that after putting over $41 bn in stimulus money toward "energy," presumably at least some token efforts toward conservation and efficiency, the best this administration can point to is fracking, and pipelining tar sand bitumen? Does this sound like a tremendous bang for your hard-earned tax dollar?
Surely jobs were created and preserved by these and other efforts, so even as a stopgap there is some efficacy. But I said it at the start, and nothing has happened to change my mind -- at least some of the stimulus should have gone to households, rich and poor alike, some flat amount across the board, say $50,000 per household. You would have seen an aggregation of activities centered around three main goals -- spending, saving, and eliminating debt.
That last one is the killer, as our debt ratio has skyrocketed, with no way to get it back down to where the average person can save, or even have discretionary income to put back into the economy. This is a situation that I strongly and sincerely believe is not accidental or coincidental. It is by design -- the owners continue their accrual without missing a beat, while the rest barely manage to hang on, making them even more desperate to cling to whatever straws are left, to accept the few crumbs that still fall from the table.
It's a patronage system, so the stimulus pelf was going to patrons regardless of which party supported what policy. But imagine for just a second how much more successful it would have been to have at least part of that money go directly to taxpayers and consumers, rather than finance weasels who pulled the money at 0%, hoarded most and lent the rest to the peons at interest -- or just rigging the interest rates in the first place. Nice racket you got there.
{Update 2/21/14 20:00 PST: Looks like The Krugster had the same bright idea there.]
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