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Originally Posted by motordavid
That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.
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Fat chance of that happening. If this bit of government spending is like most in recent years, then most of those dollars will end up in the pocket's of some large corporations, and very little will actually get done.
I've been saying this for the longest time: PRODUCTIVITY does not mean that we each wash eachother's laundry. Yet that is what these
expert economists tell us each and every day. If I pay the local neighborhood kid $20 to dig a ditch in the back yard, and then fill it in, apparently I've contributed to the productivity of our country as our GDP goes up by $20. And of course, those numbers are then used to calculate the well-being of our economy. It is just rediculous.
Productivity means "what do we get for our money?". If we are productive, then we get a lot. If Obama and Congress spend $1 billion, are we getting back $1 billion worth of infrastructure or useful services? Or are we getting back nothing? Regardless of what we get, the expert economists they wheel out in front of the camera will tell you that our GDP increased by $1 billion.
It's time that we started learning again what economic productivity really means. Unfortunately, I think far too many Americans have jobs today that serve absolutely no productive purpose whatsoever except to pad their bank account. That seems to have become the "American Way". We have tons of lawyers out there so that we can all sue eachother. We have tons of banks and investment companies out there all buying and selling eachother, breaking up companies, merging companies, etc -- but in most cases, they don't serve any actual purpose to society or to our economy except to pad the bank accounts of their owners or stockholders. And then there is advertising -- another industry that serves no useful purpose. The degree of advertising in our society has become sickening in recent years. Soon people will be tatooing a logo on their forhead for a few bucks. We need to get back to a place where we are providing useful services to people and producing useful products.
And as for our tax money, if we continue to flush our money down the toilet on things that result in nothing useful or productive for society (military hardware comes to mind), then we will never recover from this recession/depression.