Obama's Billions
I'm tired of life imitating art. This stimulus plan is looking like a terrifying remake of "Brewster's Millions". Only in Hollywood (and DC) can anyone think this could end well.
If you spend $1,000,000 a day for 2,000 years that's about $730,000,000,000. You'll need to keep going for another 128 years before you run out of spending a million a day since Jesus was born and equal the indebtedness Obama and Congress have shackled us with. If you wanted to do it in one lifetime of 75 years you'd have to spend $28.7 million a day.
2 comments:
Strictly speaking, of course, the actual spending in the stimulus package is significantly less than $730 billion - about $287 billion of the bill is in tax cuts. So, actually, you'd get done spending your millions per day sometime before the Western Schism of the Catholic Church.
Which is a mite less dramatic.
Nevertheless, the real problem here is that this is a terribly superficial way of approaching the stimulus question. Certainly, huge levels of deficit spending aren't ideal. In normal conditions, they're not what we'd do - but stimulus is being proposed specifically because we're in extraodinary, recessionary circumstances.
Now, there may well be a good argument that the future cost of the stimulus package will outweigh the present benefits of it. But to assert that, you have to make an actual, economic argument - and, to speak in the vulgar, "Hey, I've watched Brewster's Millions!" ain't it.
I disagree that the circumstances are extraordinary. We've yet to get half-way to the great depression. Hard and uncomfortable for our lazy and spoiled population to be sure but no where near the point that hard work, personal responsibility and voluntary charity won't work.
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