Riparian Church Steps Outside Its Comfort Zone and Talks About Economics...
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 10:41PM | by Otter In answer to a post on the Flying Cow Tavern forum about the current Administration's economic policies:
I think Obama's economic policies amount to giving the kids vouchers to the Laser Tag store when they really want to go to the waterslide.
Economic liberty is everything in an economy, and we're not currently free. My friends who do financial advising are telling me that everybody in America is busy paying down consumer debt. That's not a condition under which people want to participate vigorously in the economy.
I wonder sometimes whether forgiving the debts every fifty years, as the Book of Leviticus urges, isn't the best answer after all. It's murder on your financial institutions, and it sure wasn't designed for a consumer / global economy. But it ensures that the economic misery of debt has a cap on it. There's only so long this can go on before everyone becomes miserable together, and those who lend and those who borrow now suffer together.
But imagine America tomorrow if all the (for instance) credit card debt went away tonight.
I can't speak to the catastrophe it would create for Citi, but everyone would be free to do things with money that they want to do.
Having said all that, I'm naive as dammit about economics, so I can be argued out of my position, here, but I know for me, personally, I could buy things again if my debts went away.
Reader Comments (2)
When the first "bailout" funds were being distributed, my husband (who is as economically-savvy as you are) proposed that instead of the planned disbursement of funds, the administration simply send a check for $1million to each person with an American Social Security number. It would have been way less government debt, way more money in the tax-payer pocket, and more money in the economy: some of us would squirrel it away in stock and bonds and banks (shoring up the banking system), some would pay off everything we owe and put our kids through college (supporting educational institutions), and some of us would simply splurge on ridiculous expenditures (stimulating the economy through "spend, spend, spend" that we keep hearing about). Sounded good to me!
Sandra, this was a chain email that floated around. It wasn't original to your husband. The amounts (and letters) changed after the bigger bail out came along, but it was the same idea. See this: http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/dividend.asp
Both forms of the letter had the same problem. The math was off by several decimal points.
Additionally, such and action would cause soaring inflation, people would quit their jobs, the wheels that keep this country rolling would come grinding to a halt and it would be a disaster.