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Saturday, January 26, 2008
Stimulus For Dummies

A great deal of talk about economic stimulus packages this week, as the US economy careens toward recession, all the while dragging the rest of the world with it.

So far, it appears that people making less than $75k a year will get $600 bucks each, plus $300 per kid. Thus a married couple with three kids and a combined income of $110,000, will get a check for $2100 from the party of fiscal restraint.

It's a nice chunk of dough, and theoretically, we'll all run out and buy flat screens, and the economy will be saved. I'm not exactly sure how the purchase of Asian electronics will help US workers get raises to save their foreclosed homes, but I freely admit that I am not an economist.

What I am is a person with a long-term memory. In some cases, I can even remember things that happened six months ago. It's an inherited trait known as "not being a drooling moron."

On August 1 of last year, the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. We all shook our heads and wondered how this could happen in America, and we talked about how under-funded our infrastructure is, and how this is the tip of the iceberg. But then, some other stuff happened, pennant races, steroids, Labor Day sales, and we forgot about it.

In the meantime, the subprime scams have helped the economy take a giant shit. People can't afford their homes, jobs with good wages evaporate as unemployment rises, and no one can think of anything that can be done except mail out checks to us like we were a nation of apocryphal welfare queens.

Well, I thought of something.

Every state in this country, every damned one of them, has infrastructure problems. Roads, bridges, schools, parks, sewers, all of it in disrepair. No one has any money to fix this stuff. Bush's answer, as it was after September 11, 2001, was to ask us to go shopping. I think people would rather have jobs with good wages. I'm thinking construction jobs.

Why can't the federal government (who again, is about to mail out $150 billion dollars for no guaranteed return) organize a 21st century Works Projects Administration? During the Great Depression, millions were out of work, and the government put Americans to work building and repairing everything from freeways and dams to local projects like parks and common areas.

Why can't we do this again? Even someone like me who knows nothing about construction could learn enough to be useful. I can use a shovel, put hammer to nail, or any number of things. We would be government employees, similar to the military, and we would be paid good, fair wages to repair America.

It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, yes. Maybe even trillions. But if America's infrastructure is being improved, then commerce benefits. If out of work Americans are making good wages, then they are paying taxes, and spending freely. I don't understand how this isn't the type of win/win situation that everyone claims to want all of the time. We end up with a better country, both in a physical sense, and in terms of our mental outlook. We will all be far more invested in the place we live.

I doubt I'm the only one who has thought to combine these two problems in order to reach a decent solution, but if so, why haven't I heard or read about it? Is it possible that things are the way they are for a reason, and that the people who make the important decisions simply want them this way? Again, I'm no economist, but is the disappearance of the middle class really so advantageous to the wealthy, that they might prefer the nation to struggle in large measure, rather than prosper as a whole?

I want someone to explain to me why this can't work. And if all you can come at with me with is "they'll have to raise taxes," then I'll know I'm right. You get what you pay for.




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posted at 7:07 PM

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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Sound Economic Principles

It's been a real roller coaster of a week on Wall Street as stock markets jump around and nosedive. Traders are nervous, investors are panicked, and I don't give a damn.

It's all abstract, meaningless bullshit. I understand that these billions of dollars that evaporate came from the pockets of real people, and since we're also talking retirement accounts and all manner of investments, some of it was probably my money, too. It makes no difference to me. In spite of everything it would mean in terms of a serious reduction in the quality of life I would experience, I would like to see it all go to hell, and sooner rather than later.

An extended depression in the economy is inevitable, as economists have suddenly realized that extending mortgages to people who cannot possibly pay them back is not simply immoral. It's far worse.

It's bad business.

And even though the wholly bought and paid for Republican Congress changed the bankruptcy laws in the past couple of years to make it damned near impossible for normal people to get relief, when you ain't got the cash, you can't pay the vig. And since "reputable" (hah!) banks don't break legs, they are now saddled with trillions in properties that are worth less than what's still owed, due to the downturn in the housing market.

Burn baby, burn.

Let's see some banks go out of business! I want to see stockbrokers and CEOs, parasites who produce nothing, I want to see them jumping out of windows the way their predecessors did back in more honorable times. People used to take responsibility when they ran the boat aground, now it's no one's fault.

"It's just this damned economy. No one could have foreseen what would happen."

Time to start over.

Let's put a thousand men to work fixing that bridge in Minneapolis. and let's get another thousand to dig those miners out of their tomb in Utah. Why not get another twenty million on top of repairing all of the other decrepit infrastructure in this ticking time bomb of a country? And maybe we'll pay them a decent wage, and repair their injuries when they get hurt, how would that be?

The president said Thursday that he would block any attempt to raise federal gasoline taxes in order to fix the problems we face here in America.

"That's not the right way to prioritize the people's money. Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities."

I wonder if trucks and trains full of consumer goods sailing off of bridges would affect economic growth. I wonder if helicopter action shots of minivans full of pretty white kids and their soccer moms being crushed by elevated roadways would make people think twice about going to the mall to buy useless shit they don't need. I'm not a graduate of the London School of Economics, but my guess is that this sort of thing would unsettle people.

President Shitbird refuses to raise the tax on gas, which hasn't been boosted in 14 years, even a nickel, one stinking dollar for every twenty gallons sold. He is incomprehensibly shortsighted. The only people that can't see into the next day are children, the insane, and fucking morons.

Pick any two you like.

This has moved beyond dereliction of his duties as president. This if malice with aforethought. It's bad enough that he has defiled huge hunks of the Constitution, that he has the blood of American soldiers killed in Iraq on his hands, that of Iraqi civilians, and also completely ignored the Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US." His rationale is that if the gas tax is raised, people might actually drive less, and his cormorant oil cronies might see their profits fall from preposterous to merely obscene.

That's all he has knocking around in that little rat brain of his. "What can clown do for you?"*

*You, of course, being a billionaire.

The damage done to this country by this president and people like him is not irreparable. It will take decades to fix, but it is possible. As usual, it will be the working people that have to sacrifice while the blocks are restacked, and the scales move closer to balance. The people who wrecked the house, as ever, will not be inconvenienced by the laborious cleanup.

So I say, let it all go to hell, have the rich and poor alike in the streets selling apples, and let's see how it shakes out. Let the stock markets fall by 80%, the people with mansions will let rooms, we will default on our debts to the Chinese, unite as a country and tell them to suck it.

I'm done with it. I can do with less.

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posted at 12:10 AM

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Thursday, August 02, 2007
Broken Span of Attention

A ridiculous tragedy yesterday as a thousand-foot long stretch of a US interstate highway collapsed and fell into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. This was not some country road in the middle of nowhere, it was I-35W in the center of one of the larger metropolitan areas in the richest nation on Earth.

When ferries sink in Cameroon or a garbage dump buries villages in the Philippines, we sit back with our usual smugness and sigh contentedly, "How wonderful it is that I live in the greatest nation on Earth, where we build things that last forever, and they stay that way through the grace of a loving and American God."

Why should the wish-thinking that has so infected large portions of the public discourse not filter down to the mundane subject of care and maintenance of infrastructure? It must have, or we wouldn't see these sorts of calamities happening with more and more frequency.

The President this morning offers and prayers and somber good-wishes, but also declared that the costs were Minnesota's to bear, which is odd, since the last I checked, the Interstate system was a federally operated program.

But that's tough love from a Neocon who only believes in Darwinism if it's the social type, or relates to the marketplace. The winners win, the losers die off, and may God have mercy on the souls of your loved ones caught under 200 tons of concrete and rebar.

The sorrow of this event has not turned to anger yet, but it will. I'm on an accelerated program of pragmatic rage, so I was livid within the first ninety minutes of the bridge's collapse. I was even angrier this morning when I started to see some backlash to the assertion that the Bush administration bore considerable responsibility for this tragedy.

"There you go, libs, hating the president for everything. What, do you think he knocked the bridge down himself?"

Hey, there's a delightfully logical response to the questioning of Bush's priorities.

The knee-jerk defenders of this criminal administration tell you that none of this has anything to do with anything else, and especially not war in Iraq. And I know that the Defense budget has nothing to do with the monies that go into maintaining and building American infrastructure.

But it is a question of priorities.

Someone please tell me how investing even half of the $2.5 billion per week that we are currently spending in Iraq in US infrastructure would not make Americans safer on a daily basis. If the president, who incorrectly interprets his oath as protecting Americans from threats (as opposed to defending the Constitution), then repair of infrastructure that we all use every day should be a high priority.

But as usual, sir:

You have chosen...poorly.

As a person who pays attention, I know that money won't be shifted from the Sunni Triangle to Saint Paul, and besides, we're fighting this war on credit. We haven't even begun paying for this thing. Your kids will pay for it, and theirs as well.

Slap a penny, a dime, a dollar on every gallon of gas sold, and shunt it right into state transportation budgets. The feds will monitor the safety of the infrastructure, and enormous fines will be levied against states where dangerous roads, bridges, etc are found. And just to make everyone happy, those fines will be sent to the Department of Defense for any damned thing they want to spend it on, be it war or just research into how to combat the Soviet threat circa 1961. The caveat will be that none of the money can be spent on defense contractors within states that have been monitored with failing infrastructure.

It's a ridiculous solution to a serious problem, but the president has offered nothing except prayer and warm thoughts. You are The Decider. Make a decision. Do something. American lives are being threatened, yes, but far more by rust and stress than by anything Saddam, erm, Hugo Chavez, ah, Kim Jong Il, OSAMA, yes, Osama bin Laden could dream up. At least these people admit that they want us dead, instead of smiling at us and pretending to give a damn.

Keep your prayers. Fix my fucking bridges.

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posted at 8:54 PM

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