Stimulus

We are all pretty much aware of the fact that our economy isn't in the greatest shape. Many fear that we are heading for a recession. We know that a lot of people have lost jobs as companies move productions facilities overseas to take advantage of lower wages and lower tax rates, and few regulations and restrictions, and even though a lot of these people who have lost these jobs have been able to replace them, they often end up working for far less than they had been in the job that they lost. Suffice it to say that things aren't as good as we would like to see them.

Some of the problems that people are facing were brought on by themselves. Buying houses that they couldn't afford in the first place, on adjustable rate mortgages, has really hurt a lot of people, but they did it to themselves. Also, with the outrageous cost of cars these days, a lot of people have bought cars that they can't begin to afford. A lot of this comes from our instant gratification culture, where you must have whatever it is that you want right now, without regard for the long term consequences. This also leads to increased credit card debt, which just puts people farther down, never a good situation.

On top of all of this is the fact that our Government has done a lousy job of managing our economy. With high taxes, and over regulations in certain area's, and not enough in others, have driven companies to move operations overseas. Also, with outrageously out of control spending, and not being able to control themselves with our money, they have taxed the American people nearly to death. On top of that they have spent so much money that they have had to borrow it in order to meet all of the obligations that they have come up with. Then you have social programs that reward people for not working, and give them no enticement to get out and get a job, which is a further drain on our economy. Of course there is also their refusal to act on illegal immigration which has the same affect. Out of control spending, out of control taxes and borrowing, and just plain stupidity has put us in the situation we are in.

The problem is not with Capitalism, the problem is with Government officials, elected and otherwise, who are not doing the jobs that they are supposed to be doing. I wish I could say that it was all the Democrats fault, but that would be dishonest, the Republicans had more than ample opportunity to straighten things out and make them better, but instead they just kept making them worse.

So now we can all rest easy, you see, the President and Congress have come up with a plan to "stimulate" the economy by giving us all money. Isn't that a great plan? They say that they will give $600 to each working adult, $1,200 for a working couple, plus $300 per child, in order to entice people to spend money. Of course it won't work, most of the people who qualify are going to use the money for bills, or to pay off credit cards and such things, but that is not my point. The point is that they broke it, and they don't want to take the hard steps to fix it, and so now they want to buy us off, with our own money, which we only don't have because they took it from us in the first place. And this is supposed to make everything better? Does anyone see any logic to this? Apparently they haven't heard that sometimes it really is better to do nothing, if you're too stupid to do the right thing anyway.

If this doesn't prove to you that a vast majority of elected officials need to be sent packing, and replaced with intelligent people who are interested in doing what is right, rather than playing political games and following their ideology, then I guess nothing will.

A lot of attention is being given to the Presidential election, by me and everyone else, but we need to be careful not to forget that the President is only one person, and has limited power to affect change within our nation as it is the Congress who controls the purse strings. We need to take a good hard look at the people who will be running for Congress this year, so that we pick a Congress who will do the right thing, and not play politics with our lives.