I wonder what would happen if the government just sent $10,000 to every person who has a Social Security number. Yes, it would be a tremendously expensive bill, but is it possible that it could actually fix the economy? I picked an arbitrary number, but presumably we can come up with an estimate of how much money needs to be put into people’s hands to create the missing demand businesses need to make new hires. We should also be able to estimate how much of that money would come right back to the government in the form of payroll taxes, income taxes, etc. If you offer the money to everybody, it’d be hard to oppose politically. Yet, it might make better sense to have a cut off for people who are already awash with cash. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the reason businesses aren’t hiring is that everyone is broke and therefore cannot buy enough of what those businesses make. Forget tax cuts. Just give everyone a significant amount of cash and the problem is solved. Obviously, you have to be sensible about it. You have to look carefully at the budget ramifications. You have to consider inflation as a possible byproduct. You don’t want to throw more money at the problem than you need to.
But, basically, I see no better solution than to just give people a bunch of cash. Frankly, the way we’ve been fleeced over the last thirty years, we deserve it. Call it reparations.
From Balloon-Juice:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/76372300/
Lakshman Achuthan, who’s accurately predicted every recession in the modern age without “crying wolf,” claims that we’re in a recession again, and that it’s going to be even worse than the other one. This also assumes that Greece doesn’t fail (so include a big shock, and we’re really f’ed). He also argues that bond yields are going to go even lower, and that inflation will be nowhere in sight.
bonddad has an interesting rebuttal up on his blog – http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2011/10/ecri-calls-for-new-recession.html
Actually, he doesn’t claim it will be worse than previous recessions. He says that given the data he has today, it isn’t possible for him to predict the severity of the recession – just that we will have one.
He doesn’t claim it will be worse than previous recessions. He claims it will be worse than what we experienced in 2008 because we never recovered from that one in the first place.
Hmm…not sure he says that either. Yes, circumstances will be worse since we didn’t really recover much. But the recession itself may be less severe than 2008.
Lol, I think we’re talking past each other at this point. I’m basically summarizing that, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
That’s not a bad idea, unfortunately, it will never happen with the House. Also, with the way Americans are paying down debt now, I’d guess the majority of the money would go to pay debt and not to make new purchases.
What we need is a solution that the Obama administration can implement without Congress.
Yep. If I got a $10,000 check, it would go towards paying down $50,000 in student loan debt. I could wipe out one of my private loans at least lol.
Mine would be paying off credit card bills I racked up when I was unemployed. I’d love to stop the 33 1/3 APR that I am getting stuck with now on those bills.
You could structure around this. I read something about … purchase vouchers, or something. With an expiration date. So you’d need to spend the money within a certain time period, on a limited number of things.
Also, while I’d love it to happen, can you imagine if Obama came out with, ‘We want to send you $10,000 to spend in the next six months,’ and the House said, ‘blah blah deficit socialist no ten grand for you!’
He’s be accused of trying to buy the election, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work.
If you offer the money to everybody, it’d be hard to oppose politically. Yet, it might make better sense to have a cut off for people who are already awash with cash. I don’t know.
It never makes sense politically to have this kind of cut-off. It just makes the program easier to oppose from folks who make enough money to not make the cutoff.
If you really must perform some kind of morality play to ensure that only the “deserving” get it, do it by giving it out to everyone but raising taxes on the top x% so they end up paying an extra $10K when they file their taxes.
I am so fucking tired of you moral hazard types. Just exhausted.
Look out your window and tell me what it is that “moral hazard” has gotten us thus far?
WTF? Were you replying to someone else?
My comment is pretty much the exact opposite of worrying about “moral hazard.”
You’re the one who’s grading the relative intensities of morality plays and class warfares.
This has nothing to do with morality. It should have only to do with % debt/household income. The upper class has less relative debt overhang than the middle and lower classes. As the President would say, it’s just math. You don’t have to go any further than that.
Reparations, indeed. We’ve been peasants so long.
Talked with a friend who said that the 700 billion dollar Wall Street bail out could have been better spent (ya think?) and that the money used to bail out the fat cats would have paid for every foreclosed home. Instead of foreclosure, those people could have had money to spend on their local econompy or even waltz into Slave Mart if they so chose.
Imagine, 1 million homes NOT foreclosed on. That would free up alot of money. People would spend and wall street might have been able to work out it’s own problems.
Defense cuts would be HUGE. Also forbid the govt from buying goods that are not American made by Americans. Every toiletseat they purchase, should be made in the USA. Tax the hell out of imported, child-slave labor goods.
We can throw money at the situation like give us all 10K dollar checks but I think we need an overhaul in how we spend our money and where are priorities are. Gawd, I remember growing up to commercials singing, “look for the union label” You could buy clothes that were made in the USA and it didn’t mean Saipan. A friend’s dad could work in a shoestore and still bring home the bacon to a HOUSE of kids that all got to go to the dentist’s office on a regular basis.
Instead of throwing cash at the cow, let’s quit throwing our cash overseas on wars, China goods and polluting companies. Demand local, sustainable goods and ones that are American jobs. Things made by your neighbor to support their family do cost more… but cheap has a price.
We should have bailed out main st. instead. Stopped the foreclosures of one million homes. What a “christian” nation we are… one million homes empty and so many “unworthy” homeless to occupy them.
Dodge paid back it’s “loan” btw, has Wall Street paid us back yet?
But I really like the idea of Reparations. That idea can carry some weight… very creative idea.
Out of curiosity, who do you expect to finance our trillion dollar national debt remediation plan through bond purchases, if you couple it with a system of massive, trade toppling tariff hikes?
I’d recommend you wikipedia Smoot-Hawley and stop wishing we could immediately go back to the way things were in the 50s with no ill effect.
50s? Like segregation and women were possessions? I think you’re comparing me to some Tea Bagger mentality of “going back”. I’d rather be a poor typist than a poor or lazy reader.
I was thinking of how I grew up in the 70s where we didn’t have so many Wal Marts and we hadn’t totally become a nation of overseas consumers. Yeah, the 70s had it’s share of problems but I was talking about sustainability. Local economy. Local jobs.
I don’t want to “go back” to anything. I’d like to progress. Move forward. Thank you.
Lots of big political words there…fancy in fact. It’s like one of those “STFU” stop signs. It kinda prohibits most of the middleclass dude from trying to find solutions when it can’t understand the problem in such political jabberwocky terms.
The way I see it in real life terms – the problem is that we send too much money overseas, too many jobs overseas and we have a nation of consumers who now, thanks to allowing their jobs to be done by children, don’t have jobs to pay for goods made in China while they pay the bill for illegal occupations and other horseshit. It’s all around a bad deal.
As to “trades” – I’ll put aside the fancy words and ask you what exactly is the politica term for “Trade”. From where I stand in Common Man Land, all we’ve traded away is our jobs for cheap crap so that a few can make a ton of money. I don’t call that trade. I think we need to import less and rely on our own workforce to manufacture and create.
I will wiki up a few things you mentioned but in the meantime I’ll continue to support local trade, direct trade and seek out goods made by adults in America. I can’t fix things nationally (probably because I can’t speak like a national or politician) but I can try to fix things locally.
Bingo. I like it. Call it the national taxpayers equity act. The 2percenters can go screw.
What the economy really needs is more people with an income. The government employed a lot of people during the New Deal. As long as we’re talking about political impossibilities, we can aim higher than a $10K windfall.
Agreed. Don’t just send everyone $10,000. Employ all the unemployed to do public works projects. Re-build our infrastructure, build green energy projects, etc. The New Deal even included lots of public art projects for those of us who are more artistically inclined. The notion that government jobs aren’t good for the economy is total BS. Yet that is the narrative being pushed by the media and GOP. It’s like the GOP has no idea what ROI is. I wish we could go back to reality based economics and stop the Randian nonsense that has taken over.
And while were at it, build more schools, hire more teachers, fund more higher education, and forgive student loans. Stop this nonsense ideal that every student should be an academic whiz and go to university and go back to teaching trades and arts again for the students with aptitudes in those areas.
Yeah if Obama could just figure out how to attach a big vacuum to offshore accounts with a direct deposit into Fed.
If we can drop hellfire on enemy citizens, we should be able to repossess money from tax shelters.
I think that’s a pretty bipartisan position.
not bombs…
One rocket launcher not purchased could keep a school from closing.
Most of our schools have bathrooms that are completely unusable by the students due to broken plumbing or old tiles (asbestos)… yet we can’t fix them because we are too busy rocket launchers to destroy schools overseas.
There’s been a huge disconnect in this country about how much money there is truly out there. So many will scream about how they don’t want their taxes (aka investment in their fellow countrymen, neighborhood and Nation) to pay to heal women and children here in the USA but don’t blink an eye about using their taxes to kill women and children “over there”.
It’d be like watching my spouse buy beer when the family was starving. The Feds need a basic home ec course.
The whole thing is about too few people having relatively way too mucy money. 1% VS. 99%. Am I tlaking class warfare, that is, 1% against 99%? The money needes to roll but now it’s locked up in huge accoutns of corporations and billionaires. How many private jets can someone buy, after all.
It’s especially realistic to send a check to everyone. Bush did this when he lowered taxes on the rich. Of course the poor got only peanuts.
It would be very realistic and helpful to find a way to get more money into the hands of the 99 %, especially the lowest incomes. That might come down to creating jobs and regulation. What does Mr. O. think about it.
At least two things would happen: Much of the money would be transferred to banks to pay off debts and Republicans would find a few undeserving people to carpet the media with.
I’d suggest a variation: require any bank who received help from taxpayers to reduce their interest rates to inflation + x% or to their savings interest rate + x%; forgive personal debt incurred by paying for food or medical care up to a maximum of some amount of money. Hire all unemployed construction workers as handymen to the elderly, the disabled, and the poor (on short stints at first and with future employment based on reliability and quality of work). Hire out-of-work artists and musicians to work in public schools that don’t have those programs. Gee, I don’t know, do something about foreclosures.
Let the Republicans oppose that. Fixed income seniors would vote for Democrats in droves.
That and a Jubilee would just about do it.