Friday, January 30, 2009

Stimulate Me With Pork!

This is revealing.

This week, more than 200 notable economists -- including three Nobel laureates -- signed an open letter in The New York Times challenging Barack Obama's false suggestion that all economists agree a bailout is needed. It was entitled "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true."

More evidence:

Yes, $400 million for STD prevention will save your job. A $34 million remodeling of the Department of Commerce, $150 million for honeybee insurance, and the hundreds of billions in new government growth, you are led to believe, will create economic growth faster than a similar-sized business or payroll tax cut.

Is anyone paying attention?

4 comments:

Ordinary Jill said...

While the other items are unrelated to economic growth, I would argue that honeybee insurance is actually important to the agricultural sector. Many farmers are dependent on trucked-in honeybees to pollinate their crops, and those portable bees are highly susceptible to colony collapse syndrome. Most Americans don't realize how drastically this nation's food production will decrease if the bee population continues to decline at its current rate.

Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC said...

I don't disagree in principle, but this had no place in a "stimulus bill"

Ordinary Jill said...

Unless you consider the economic impact of large-scale farm failures. I think it would be more appropriate in a farm bill, but a case can be made that it is related to the health of our economy. Those other purely social programs, I agree, are just ornaments on this christmas tree of a bill.

Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC said...

Meh...we'll agree to disagree on specifics, but I think we agree on the problems.