Is this true??

[Goofycampers]

Note to Govt: SPEND, SPEND, SPEND. We are in a recession, we MUST increase GDP. By itself, govt spending always increases GDP, but on top of that it will stimulate private sector spending. So SPEND AWAY boys, don't stop till the economy is growing again.

Is this answer a joke?

 

[disney1990]

From what I heard, there is $200,000 earmarked for tattoo removal in California. Not joking.

Michelle

Everybody has things that they can agree or disagree below in the bill. I totally support the money being spent to remove GANG TATTOOS. Once you are marked with a gang tattoo, it is virtually impossible to get out of the gang. Parts of the Washington, DC area are being overrun with gangs and I welcome anything that will help to stop the growth of gangs in the United States and the violence that they bring.

 

[manning]

Link?

Don't you listen to the news????

 

[SteveInBrooklyn]

Is this answer a joke?

No, it's basic Keynesian economics I think. It worked to get us out of the Depression, it'll work now.

 

[SteveInBrooklyn]

"

Henry Morganthau - Treasury Secretary to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's remarks about the government's failed attempts stimulate the economy out of the Great Depression by excessive spending and borrowing.

Morgethau turned out to be wrong!!!! Roosevelt's spending was too timid. Eventually, during WWII, excessive spending and borrowing DID get us out of the Depression.

 

[manning]

Note to Govt: SPEND, SPEND, SPEND. We are in a recession, we MUST increase GDP. By itself, govt spending always increases GDP, but on top of that it will stimulate private sector spending. So SPEND AWAY boys, don't stop till the economy is growing again.

Act II --- taxes and inflation. BIG time inflation. I don't know if this would happen to the degree mentioned below but who knows.

I was talking to a person who lived in Germany in the '30s I believe. This took place years ago. This person mentioned inflation in germany at the time. I don't know if he was serious or not. He said if you went out to eat you paid for the meal before you ate it because the price could go up before you finished.

 

[JMD]

Note to Govt: SPEND, SPEND, SPEND. We are in a recession, we MUST increase GDP. By itself, govt spending always increases GDP, but on top of that it will stimulate private sector spending. So SPEND AWAY boys, don't stop till the economy is growing again.

Here we go again....

 

[JMD]

Everybody has things that they can agree or disagree below in the bill. I totally support the money being spent to remove GANG TATTOOS. Once you are marked with a gang tattoo, it is virtually impossible to get out of the gang. Parts of the Washington, DC area are being overrun with gangs and I welcome anything that will help to stop the growth of gangs in the United States and the violence that they bring.

I really hope you just forgot to add your [/sarcasm] tag.

 

[OctMtnWoods]

This is what you get when they are running around yelling the sky is falling and there is no time to read it. Sign it now. Its urgent! Scammed!

Let's hope people wake up to this way of doing business and don't allow it to happen again.

 

[Geoff_M]

No, it's basic Keynesian economics I think. It worked to get us out of the Depression, it'll work now.

The "Keynes" name is certainly getting a lot of use nowadays, but as this article points out his name and his ideas are being often misused and misinterpreted in Washington and by Obama's supporters:

Taking the Name of Lord Keynes in Vain

By Mario J. Rizzo Friday, February 20, 2009

Keynes is being invoked in Washington these days; it is a pity few seem to understand what he thought.

The eminent economist John Maynard Keynes is having a moment these days, as policymakers and pundits search for answers to the current economic problems. The Wall Street Journal recently dubbed Keynes “The New Old Big Thing in Economics.” The Christian Science Monitor ran an article called “Raising Keynes: An old economist finds new rock-star status.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has said the country is in a “Keynesian Moment.”

But if we are going to attempt to solve the problems of today by drawing inspiration from Keynes, then we should pay attention to his mature ideas rather than to the textbook versions of what he said, some of which reflect Keynes’s earlier thinking. When we do this we shall find that some of his policy proposals were quite different from today’s “Keynesian” wisdom. Other proposals were extraordinarily radical and far from what is being proposed by lawmakers on the political left or right today.

It is true that in the 1920s and early 1930s, Keynes advocated measures such as deficit-financed public works expenditure to offset recessions. But that was not unique to him. Such “orthodox” academic economists as Frank H. Knight, Jacob Viner, and Paul H. Douglas also advocated such policies, albeit on different grounds. So when advocates of deficit spending for public works projects invoke Keynes, they could just as easily invoke orthodox economists as well. Either way, by the late 1930s, Keynes was not an advocate of many of the countercyclical policies being advocated today. For example, with respect to increasing investment through public works—or what today we are calling “infrastructure improvements”—Keynes’s view is highly nuanced.

In the first place, he preferred that such investments be made without deficits. But if they were to be made as “loan expenditure”—that is, through a deficit in the portion of the government’s budget allocated to long-term expenditures like infrastructure—the expenditure should be covered by a surplus in the portion of the budget allocated to ordinary expenses like transfer payments, or through a special fund accumulated in prosperous times for just such purposes. If a deficit were incurred, the investments should be “self-liquidating,” that is they should repay their costs over the long run. Thus his strong, but not rigid, preference was against deficit-financed public works.

It is important to note that Keynes did not think that public works expenditure was very effective in countering existing or impending recessions. For one, he believed that it was difficult to get the timing right; it would take a long time to plan and execute the appropriate projects (indeed, many of the projects would not take effect until the pressing economic problem was inflation and not recession).

...