The Big Stimulus

Get rid of the empire

By Justin Raimondo

".........Along these lines, President Obama and his party have come up with a "stimulus package," and I must pause to remark how important language is to these people. It's a "package," you see, just like a Christmas gift, only better, because they, the politicians, get to play Santa Claus and shower their constituents with presents. This legislative larceny is predicated on the oddly counterintuitive notion that we can and should spend our way out of poverty – that the sins of our profligacy can be forgiven if only we indulge in yet more ravenous forms of gluttony.

To ordinary Americans, this kind of Washington-think is wholly alien: it is Bizarro economics. After all, when normal human beings are in financial trouble they cut back on their spending, as they are doing now. The American polity, in its younger days, would naturally apply the same logic to government, but, in our dotage, we impart magical powers to the organs of the state, which can produce wealth out of thin air, with only the aid of a printing press. Oh, yes, we understand – albeit vaguely – that this is debt for future generations to pay. Yet we recall – even more vaguely – old bromides like "We owe it to ourselves," which are embedded in our collective memory like flies in amber, and we are reassured.

Putting aside Bizarro economics, for now, and my wholesale rejection of same, there is one way we can stimulate the economy with a mighty injection of cash into the hands of one and all. No, not another government subsidy, but the cutting of the single largest federal expenditure down to a manageable size: the U.S. military budget...... "