Poordog Millionaires?

The so called economic stimulus bill that has been recently making the rounds in the US Capitol is fast becoming unpopular with normal thinking citizens for the ghastly amount of funding that is being proposed for different sectors of the government. It looks like this bill has really been designed to stimulate government spending, not the economy. And as if to add salt to our ‘economic’ wounds, almost all of this spending has no direct bearing on the economy at least for the next two years, by which time most economies will be able to get out of the rut with no help at all. A country like the US can surely get out of a recession within two years; it will be a brilliant (and nothing short of magical) feat if we can accomplish the feat in spite of such back breaking and nerve wrenching expenditure bills.

It is pretty obvious that the fundamentals of the economy are strong enough to be able to engineer a recovery in two years. But it is bills like these that gnaw at these very fundamentals thus making it even more difficult for industry to stage a comeback. The best option is tax cuts across the board as such a move would broaden the net and put spending money in the hands of individuals and corporations who are more likely to spend it much more faster and more directly than any government can. However, if the current policy makers prefer funding government policies at the expense of industry and trade, there is a compromise solution that might work better and turn around the recession faster (at least in the short term) than the current proposed spending bill. Of course, this would hit industry and trade badly, but aren’t those evil corporations supposed to be banned anyway? This compromise solution would not ban them, but it may entice some of the owners to ditch their ‘rich’ corporate lifestyles forever!

In true Obama style of spreading the wealth, why not spread the spending around? ‘Distribute’ the $800 billion plus amount equally among all tax paying citizens of the USA. Maybe we can change that to include all tax paying residents of the USA and then include the non tax paying citizens also (just so that the vote bank doesn’t get annoyed). Wondering how this will fund the government? The way government is always funded – taxes! Tax the amount thus distributed at source at the prevailing rates. So, every recipient will become rich overnight and for once all of the taxes can be collected at the highest possible tax rate. With one swipe, the government will be flush with additional money and everybody will become rich (at least for a few days) and it will be up to each recipient to decide if they want to stay rich or if they want to spend their way to poorness! We can safely bet that at least two out of three Americans will go on a spending binge which will in turn trigger our sleeping economy and put it into overdrive as spending increases dramatically. This in turn will mean more jobs as well as more tax dollars for the federal government.

This will give rise to a few problems like people not turning up for work or not buying lottery tickets for a while, but once the new found money dries up, things will change. To help matters, government can stipulate that recipients cannot leave their current jobs for a year from the time the plan is announced. This will also give all recipients the chance to experience a rich lifestyle. Within a year, either they have spent most of their ‘aid’ or they have made enough intelligent decisions to be able to stop working if they want to.

Meanwhile, the government of the day can openly use the tax dollars thus generated to foster its pet welfare projects and help take the USA that much closer to the USSA (United Socialist States of America). And hopefully, nobody would object as they would all be too busy spending/minding their new found wealth.