So as it turns out, the stimulus is really just a premature appropriations bill that will be fully made up of deficit spending instead of being any other budget bill that is actually supposed to fall in line with the taxes we’ve raised. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of a lot of the things being done in the “stimulus” bill, I just have issue with the fact it’s not going to stimulate anything. Sure, we can hire a few tens of thousands of trained and certified laborers for the construction and renovation projects. Hell, in a few years, it could stimulate technical schools and trade schools that train such construction workers, landscapers, electricians, plumbers, and so forth. But as it is right now, the jobs being created are pretty trade specific, and won’t really be of much use to the thousands of m manufacturers, insurance agents, salespeople, retailers, restaurant owners, truck drivers, and so on who have recently lost jobs.
Our economy, our country, our infrastructure, and our workforce are not in a position to create easy jobs that will put people to work doing something useful. Sure, there was a time when churning up a ton of factories to produce tanks, guns, uniforms, and bullets worked. That sort of initiative, even if popular enough to start, would not be very effective. And to what ends? Do we need tanks or bullets? Even if we did, how many people would be employed compared to how many robots would be produced by other robots in robot making plants that might hire a few hundred more workers? See, there is no easy way to create jobs that people can do that would be of any use.
We could pay people sub-minimum wage to plant flowers and trees and clean up streets and other beautification projects, harkening back to China’s grim self destructive era. Millions dying of starvation aside, would this even be something unemployed bankers and car makers would do? Would you go from your 100K/year job as an investment manager to 4/hour to plant trees along the highway?
There really aren’t any quick nor easy ways out of this. In fact, there is no way out, but through. The only way we will recover is to lower our expectations of recovery. We were living in a bubble, and that level of prosperity is just simply not sustainable. We need to know that a recession of multiple years is ahead, and when we come out of it, we’ll be stronger, steadier, if a little poorer for it.
Think of this as a big reset button.
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