Stimulate Me!!!

After working through the weekend to get a grip on the stimulus package I have come up with the following questions.


By the way I realize I’m simplifying all of this.

But these are some questions I have

I have heard all about ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure projects and I’m all for it because I do believe we are falling behind with our roads, mass transportation, bridges as well as starting building windmills and other green energy projects including greening of homes Everybody selling this stimulus plan says that these are great new jobs which I’m sure people can agree with. My problem is that these ‘shovel ready’ projects are all great but how the hell does that directly affect the guy in New York City who was just laid off from their corporate job? If I got laid off, an infrastructure job like going to reinforce the Brooklyn Bridge is not going do me diddly squat. I have never hung up a picture and not banged the hammer against my thumb and made it look like a Warner Brothers cartoon. I can see it now, Righetti climbing to the top of a sky-scraper to screw in a light-bulb and then tumbling down when I have to answer a text message coming in.

I know that white-collar jobs are going to be harder for the federal government to just create and even if they are I’m sure a stimulus package with these kinds of job is going to be a harder ‘sell’ to the American public than construction jobs but I think this is important thing to consider. I also realize that the thought is that these construction jobs will put more money into the economy which will eventually mean that there will be hiring in white-collar jobs too, but I wonder how long that will take to trickle down to these gigs.

Basically if we create 1 million jobs building bridges but you only have 500,000 people who know how to use a jack-hammer we might be much further along than projects just not being ‘shovel ready’ we might need a bunch of jobs to be Righetti Ready

Another issue I have is what exactly we are trying to do with the stimulus package. Are we just trying to get the American People back to spending a ton of money? Economists have been saying for years that we as a nation weren’t saving enough and living off too much credit. Well one of the side effects of the economic crisis is that people have begun saving more money and spending less. This is of course not great for the immediate economy but probably IS a good mentality for the long-run.

The bigger question is where are we trying to go with the economy today? Are we hoping that the stimulus package gets us back to a 2005 mentality, a 1995 mentality, a 1985 mentality or a 1955 mentality?