Instead of stimulus, do nothing – seriously

[m42]

Stimulus is unconstitutional. And history shows that the economy can recover strongly on its own, if politicians stay out of the way.

OAKLAND, CALIF. - As we wait to see how the politicians in Washington will alter the stimulus package the Obama administration is pushing, many questions are being raised about the measure's contents and efficacy. Should it include money for the National Endowment for the Arts, Amtrak, and child care? Is it big enough to get the economy moving again? Does it spend money fast enough? Hardly anyone, however, is asking the most important question: Should the federal government be doing any of this?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0209/p09s01-coop.html

[eternaltraveler]

though the stimulus is stupid it is also something of a straw man since it amounts to only about a tenth of financial outlays geared toward "fixing" the economic downturn.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok

most of the rest of it doesn't even involve a vote or the slightest hint of transparency

[John A Roark]

I must concur, since they're thinking about doing a SECOND stimulus (read:throw more money down the drain).
As an individual, I have decided that part of my duty is now to avoid taxes whenever and however I can, and the impulse is guided first, at the crooks (read: government), and second, at the citizens who vote for such nonsense. They are fools who think they can take from some to give to others with a clean conscience because they don't see their vote as equal to force and violence. Fine, let them pay.

I do not understand why people look at the history of government intervention into the economy, see the 9000+% failure rate . . .
and instead of learning from that, ignore the lesson and insist, "but WE can do better!"

Then the next history lesson they ignore is the one that shows the same dismal failure rate for everybody that has gone before them that have said, "but we can do better!" If it is impossible to do better, why do people think they have to try again and again, always begging off the public dole to do so?

And worse, why do we put up with it?

[Tom Palven]

The people's Republic of China is probably weaker in the area of civil liberties than the US, particularly with regard to free speech, but it is probably less authoritarian in other areas. China seems to encourage more innovative free enterprise than the US, which would help explain it's extremely rapid economic growth.

The US emphasis on subsidizing bureaucratic economic dinosaurs and the military-industrial complex, while sqeezing tax dollars out of young innovators is the opposite of China's; and when one considers that the mega-bucks the US spends on it's foreign legions in the Mid-East is counted as part of positive US GDP, one can see that the US economy is a Humpty Dumpty that has fallen, and not an economy in need of a Republican recovery plan, or a simple time-out from Democrat recovery plans. Neither Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, nor Ron Paul and all of his men are going to put Humpty together again.

[Tom Palven]

Well, it seems that the Rupublican stimulus package would be to give more money to Iraq, Afghanistan. and Pakistan, to stimulate them buy bigger armies and create more effective police states, with more road blocks, check points, identification papers, etc.