Almost a year has passed since the Obama Administration has come into power and what has Obama accomplished?  Well, he won the Nobel peace prize … and passed a stimulus package that so far looks to have been what critics predicted: a pointless increase in the nation’s debt to be placed on the shoulders of our children.
Even “Cash for Clunkers,” one program which has been largely praised as a success, looks to be, upon further examination, not quite as profitable as the Administration boasts, and possibly even a negative stimulus.  Based on analyses by automotive consumer researchers, tax dollars ended up paying an average of  $24,000 for each of the 125,000 cars sold under “Cash for Clunkers” that would not have been sold without it. It appears that this stimulus was less for the growth of the economy and more for the growth of government.

“For that price, the federal government could have purchased the 125,000 cars outright at manufacturer suggested retail prices, such as a Ford Fusion, Focus or even a Mustang, and then handed each of the recipients an additional bonus check averaging the Cash-for-Clunkers subsidy of $4,000. Or they could have bought every one of those 125,000 people a Smart car and then given them a check for $6,000.”
-    thenewamerican.com

The main point really comes down to this: a government cannot take money from its citizens, then turn around and give small portions back to them, and call that a recovery. The most efficient way to accomplish an economic stimulus would be to simply allow the people to keep their money in the first place.
Although the Obama Administration is touting the success of their stimulus because earnings are up, this is really just because companies have fired half their workforce, so they’re getting a better bottom line while still bringing in lower revenues.  In the human sense, the economy picks up when employment improves, and that is still getting worse. What do the numbers matter if people are out of work?

It seems the Obama Adminisration needs to go back to kindergarten to learn the same lesson in economics that was taught to me during that intense first year of education. In my kindergarten class, we were all given a certain amount of money to use at our imaginary grocery store. We were told we could buy whatever we wanted with that money.  But of course, in the end, we learned a very heartbreaking lesson: when you run out of money, you can’t buy anything else.

The reality of our current situation is that we as a people have simply run out of money, and unlike my kindergarten teacher, you can’t just print more of it. Actually you can print more, but as one clever observer noted, it is like taking a bucket of water out of the deep end of the pool and pouring it into the shallow end in hopes of raising the level.  Rather we just need to do as the kindergartners — work hard and wait patiently for earnings to increase.