Replies to post #92241 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

money in the hands of citizens is infinetly better than letting the special intrestes who write the bills pick their buddy buddy programs to get their Stimulus which we can safely say has not and will not do diddly to help this economy but will be tremendously beneficial to the 'special' people who get their pet project funded.

Define "infinitely better".

A single citizen has the power to spend a check on something that drives the economy - but, they can just as easily put that check into a bank account, which does nothing to drive the economy.

On the other hand, take any "shovel ready" project as defined by the stimulus bill. The government contracts these projects out to businesses, which often sub-contract pieces of the project to other companies. All of these companies need to purchase materials for these projects, and they have to hire workers to do the manual labor.

When you start adding up the stimulative effect of a government project that is contracted out to the private industry, the number of citizens who end up getting their hands on that money is pretty enormous. The laborers all get paychecks, for example. The materials that are purchased lead to orders from companies that also employ workers - such as steel, for example. The steel workers will benefit from the purchase of steel for these projects. And that's just one of hundreds of materials needed for new infrastructure. You also see architects, designers, and engineers involved in these projects, who get paid to provide their services.

Bottom line, it's a multiplicative effect, where money is exchanging hands multiple times - and that's actually more effective than giving money to the hands of a single person, as you would with a tax cut.

As for "special" people with "pet projects", what do you think these are? Every Congressman has projects that benefit their district, and which seem unnecessary or frivolous by the standards of another Congressman from a different district. But does that make the project any less capable of generating jobs, and stimulating the economy? Not when the entire country is getting money for these kinds of projects.

Most of the political rhetoric would have you believe that there are frivolous projects everywhere, but that's bull. Out of hundreds of projects, you're going to find a small list of ones that truly don't make sense, but as a percentage they are fairly insignificant. Not that we shouldn't eliminate any kind of waste, but if you were to cancel all the so-called frivolous projects, you'd end up with a few million dollars more, which at a national level is barely a drop in the bucket.