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The 'stimulus' plan can't work
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Given that Barack Obama has signed his $787 billion economic "stimulus" bill into law, I thought I'd go on record to say that this federal spending spree not only won't stimulate the economy, but it can't.
Money is simply being shifted around -- imagine watching a shell game at the county fair, only this time at the point of a gun -- from one set of people to another. Therefore, by definition alone, there will be no "additional" spending or investment taking place thereafter; it will merely be done by one set of people at the expense of another.
I'm tempted to say this is nothing but a zero-sum game, where the privileged classes are winners and the rest of us are the losers. But that's not exactly right; it's worse than zero-sum.
Given that the unproductive are being rewarded at the expense of the productive, the productive no longer have as much capital to invest in new business ventures -- which, when done wisely, creates additional wealth.
Forget for a moment the immorality of it all -- the fact that this program constitutes theft on an almost incomprehensible scale. Resources quite literally are being confiscated from people who make sound financial decisions and being given to those who have demonstrated an inability to manage their affairs intelligently in the first place.
So from here on out, poorly run companies won't simply squander their own wealth by malinvesting, caving to union demands, or running up their own debts; they'll now have the pleasure of doing the same thing using money that once belonged to individuals and companies who actually produce wealth.
And this isn't even considering the fact that a significant portion of the spending will be funded using the printing press, further taxing the hoi polloi via inflation and indebting future generations.
Sure sounds like a net loss to me.
