Joe Biden Wants To Cancel Christmas

The United States Council of Mayors just came out with a massive, pork-laden report for use in helping the next administration spend its economic stimulus money.  The mayor of Miami was caught off guard by a television interviewer who asked whether a project to build another water slide at a water park was really infrastructure or just pork.  The mayor said he didn't read all of the 1130 projects proposed by the country's mayors; when the reporter informed him the water slide was proposed by his own city, Miami, he didn't seem embarrassed at all.  He should have been.  

At a press conference talking about, but not detailing, the upcoming stimulus package, incoming Vice-President Joe Biden assured the assembled reporters that the stimulus bill will be filled only with rational projects; it would be no "Christmas Tree" of make-work gifts.  But if consumer spending on Christmas presents is such an important part of our economy, what would be wrong with a stimulus bill overflowing with spending of every kind, gift-wrapped especially for those the administration loves most?  The prevailing idea is Keynesian demand-side economics, as Obama economic guru Larry Summers indicated in his press conference comments: consumer purchasing power must be maintained.  Keynes himself said it didn't matter at all how the money made it into consumers' hands.  Keynes even advocated paying laborers to dig holes and then fill them back up as a way to stimulate demand.  

So what's with Biden's assurance that the stimulus bill will be no Christmas Tree?  If the stimulus bill should be "gift free", why not advocate cancelling Christmas altogether?  Consumers should be advised to, instead of buying gifts, develop their personal infrastructure: go back to school, start a business, put a new room on the house, resurface the driveway, anything but save money, pay down debt, and live more frugally.

Saving money, paying down debt, and living more frugally, however, are exactly what consumers should be doing.  Only from an enlarged pool of savings can real, sustainable economic growth come.  We should all be following Lew Rockwell's Law: "Always believe the opposite of what state officials tell you, and the corollary, always do the opposite of what they advise you."  If the government says spend, it would be wise to save.  And if the government says there won't be pork in the infrastructure bill, it would be wise to not believe it.

 

Mayors' infrastructure request full of pork, critic says

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/18/mayors.pork/index.html