As I was reading the news online this morning, I came across an article about how Congress has included a pay raise for federal judges in their $15 BILLION bailout package for the U.S. Auto Industry.
Article is here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Pay-raise-for-judges-tucked-apf-13798044.html
So my question is this: If the United States is in financial dire straits (which it is), and we have such a high unemployment rate (533,000 jobs lost in November this year, and the unemployment rate is at 6.7%), why is the government awarding itself pay raises and bailing out every industry that asks? How can we afford a $5000 pay raise for EACH congressman and a 2.8% raise for every federal judge when we can't keep American employment going? Add this to the fact that the entire bailout system is failing - the companies involved have lied and purposely not revealed the extent of their problems to the U.S. people before (see article here ), and we start to see why the Federal government needs to start REALLY LOOKING at the things they're signing. AIG suddenly "finding" an additional $10 Billion in debt is a pretty grim indicator of how little the government's "oversight" seems to work.
Instead of just hemhorraging money at failing industries, the federal government needs to let the free market work itself out. Rather than trying to keep these companies "alive" for a few more months, we need to let CAPITALISM follow it's course. To demonstrate: if I had an "established" printing company that suddenly started to fail, would the government owe me any money? Or would my printing company fall by the wayside as a casualty of the free market system? Our economic system is based on competition and wise business practices; giving any company a leg-up without VERY good reason (or nationalizing the company - but that's a topic for another post) is foolhardy at best, and can become catastrophic at worst.
Rather than undercut the free market, we need to spend the money to revitalize American industry; build American factories and create American jobs that will put currency back into the economic structure. We don't need to just blindly throw money at our problems; we need to look for economically-viable solutions. Increase import tariffs and start producing what we need here at home - it helped bring us out of the Great Depression, so why wouldn't it work now? Creating domestic jobs and goods, while creating an incentive to "buy American" would certainly help our economy. Are we afraid of a little Nationalism?
I've heard it said that the two "engines" of the world economy are American consuming, and Chinese production. I say we re-build the system: Instead of relying on foreign powers for the bulk of our goods, we should create for ourselves and keep all that money here.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Economic Stimulus Package
As I keep reading in the news that Senate Democrats (such as Nancy Pelosi, whom the article quotes directly) want to put yet another "economic stimulus" package on the table for President Obama to sign on his first day as President. I think it goes without saying that another economic stimulus package is not what this country's leadership needs to be worried about. Giving free money to all Americans who file taxes sounds good, but where is all this money coming from?
Our children will still be paying this "Economic stimulus" crap off in 50 years. For a party that seems so concerned about protecting the environment and ensuring a "decent" standard of living for future generations, going $500 BILLION into debt doesn't seem to add up. Add this to the fact that, despite anything President-elect Obama promised on the campaign trail about lowering taxes in the middle- and lower-class brackets, he can't do it. There's no way - in order to pay for all the governmental "change we believe in", the government is going to have to increase taxes all around - how's THAT for change? If anyone out there can explain to me how Obama can give Americans another economic stimulus package, bail out Corporate America, lower taxes, and increase our standard of living (with any number of ideas that were bandied around during the election cycle: socialized medicine, green power, etc) and still make any sense at all, I'd love to hear it.
Another fun note: Obama has taken a stance on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Obama, in only his second public statement of policy, has committed the United States to being in the "leading role of saving the environment". A quote, from my sources:
Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a "federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax", designed to reduce America's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.
Scary, no? If you read the article further, it points out the flaws in Obama's ecological views (most of which seem to have come from Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth). But, judge for yourselves - read the article and hit me up with your ideas and observations.
Our children will still be paying this "Economic stimulus" crap off in 50 years. For a party that seems so concerned about protecting the environment and ensuring a "decent" standard of living for future generations, going $500 BILLION into debt doesn't seem to add up. Add this to the fact that, despite anything President-elect Obama promised on the campaign trail about lowering taxes in the middle- and lower-class brackets, he can't do it. There's no way - in order to pay for all the governmental "change we believe in", the government is going to have to increase taxes all around - how's THAT for change? If anyone out there can explain to me how Obama can give Americans another economic stimulus package, bail out Corporate America, lower taxes, and increase our standard of living (with any number of ideas that were bandied around during the election cycle: socialized medicine, green power, etc) and still make any sense at all, I'd love to hear it.
Another fun note: Obama has taken a stance on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Obama, in only his second public statement of policy, has committed the United States to being in the "leading role of saving the environment". A quote, from my sources:
Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a "federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax", designed to reduce America's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.
Scary, no? If you read the article further, it points out the flaws in Obama's ecological views (most of which seem to have come from Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth). But, judge for yourselves - read the article and hit me up with your ideas and observations.
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