I have a number of thoughts with regards to the American stimulus plan and just one thought when it comes to the Canadian version of said plan. First, the American plan:
Most of what the Republican critics have to say about Obama’s plan is true. It is a total grab-bag of social policy wrapped up as a stimulus package. The democrats are pushing through a whole host of issues that were part of Obama’s platform in this plan and calling it “stimulus” so that they don’t have to have a fight over each individual issue in the days to come. Basically a stroke of political genius. The Republicans just don’t have enough air-time to hash out all these issues because all of them are coming at them at once in one big whopper of a package. And if they oppose said package (as they did) they come out looking petty and uncaring… oblivious to the pain of out-of-work Americans.
There is one part they aren’t being honest about though: they keep saying that this does not amount to economic stimulus. True, it is not just a straight cash give-away, but every dollar that the government spends is stimulus, regardless of how it spends it. The government could spend $100 billion on chocolate bars and that $100 billion would get into the economy just as effectively as it would if they gave the money away in tax breaks. The people who make the bars, package the bars, ship the bars, and sell the bars would all get money and they would all turn around and spend that money in some way etc. The only people you can give money to with no guarantee that it will stimulate anything are bankers and the obscenely rich. Everyone else will spend it.
And here’s the funny thing about money: when you have it, it isn’t stimulus, it is only potential. Sure, having it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, but it doesn’t do anything. To turn money from potential into something you have to spend it. That something is almost always a combo platter of human activity and material property. We’ll come back to this idea…
So if you give money to the banks, you increase their base potential (they look better on the books which makes the people on Wall Street who spend all day staring at those books feel better)… but as we have seen, if the banks don’t turn around and spend that money then it doesn’t actually stimulate a damn thing. If you put the money into government programs you are spending it… which always ignites a chain reaction of activity. Take the $75 million for smoking cessation programs for example. How does helping people quit smoking help the economy? Well let’s see, it gives people who develop and design educational and marketing materials a job (along with the attendant managers, planners, etc)… it gives people who actually administer the program a job (doctors, students, counsellors, etc)… and all those people then turn around and support other people having jobs by spending the money they make…and on and on… and (at least in theory) it gives you the bonus of helping bring down future health care costs. $50 million for the arts? Well, damn, artists need to eat too, and I’d say we need art more than ever right now to help us navigate these uncharted waters ahead. And when artists eat… cooks, waiters, farmers, grocers, and possibly even Burger King all get an economic shot in the arm… and all those people employ other people… who spend money… someone should tell Harper this.
You see the Republicans are lying when they say this isn’t economic stimulus. They are lying when they say they know better (I mean come on… who the hell put us here?). They are right to whine about being steamrolled here as they most certainly are… but since I happen to agree with just about everything Obama wants to do I’m happy, and I know that it will serve the purpose of stimulus.
As far as all the whinging and moaning about the debt to our children goes… well I don’t know about that. You see, China is the one providing the cash here for the most part. China could be holding on to that cash and increasing its potential, or it could be spending it elsewhere and increasing activity somewhere else… or we could suck as much of that cash outta China as possible, spend it as fast as possible upgrading our infrastructure/economy/industry/technology and then when it comes time to pay the bill… well, we’ll probably have to go to war with China some day anyways. We are taking their money (potential) and turning it into our activity and property. Maybe this isn’t so bad if you look at it as an early offensive strategy the way Hitler looked at his dealings with Stalin. Or is that too Machiavellian? Hmmm… if the Chinese are going to kill the whole planet with their coal plants maybe Machiavelli is the order of the day? Maybe it doesn’t even have to go as far as war… maybe we are just tricking the Chinese into giving us the money we need to develop (and patent) all the green tech of the future… so we can turn around and charge em up the wazoo for it once the writing is clearly on the wall for them… you know… to pay for our debt. It’s not like the USA has much to worry about anyway, they own the IMF and the World Bank.
When it comes to the Canadian stimulus package I have just one thought: I do not trust Mr. Harper to spend a single penny in a responsible, transparent, or even legal way. Period.
Sorry so slow to respond to this – I have to slide right out of the electronic environment awhile every so many pulsations, to renew my citizenship in the past. – It is, I think, a cogent and accurate analysis of Obama’s actions. However, apart from the thoroughly charming idea of $100 billion in chocolate, alas, I fear it may be too subtle for the current zeitgeist. After these 8 years of Bush, a great many Americans can no longer remember what a real president is – and folks are getting kinda feisty, on account of how hunger’s looming – (I myself am subsisting on fruit juice, to which I add body by making it into jello) – (jeez, with material like this, I oughta be writing for Stephen Colbert!) – and so you see they feel totally betrayed and absolutely livid, because they do not see Obama striding forcefully up Wall Street at the head of a howling mob carrying torches and pitchforks (along with the usual compliment of AK47s, 357 magnums, 9mms, Uzis, RPGs, rocket launchers, bazookas, etc etc etc) – it’s all fook the loaf boys, oi’m fer th croombs now, gimme gimme gimme – panic ache, panic ache, Maker’s Mam, quake us awake as quick as yer clam – all too fast, slaving meat wheel spinning out of control – braking ratios blown with all others – putting on war for $peed, where we used to put on $peed for war, because the money action is velocity, acceleration of circulation – current, see, is currency! – We need a big switch to flip from Extractive Economy to Sustainable Economy – a huge switch, which doesn’t exist – so we have to buy time, as you say, which is such a tricky proposition given the accelerating rate at which things are going down – have to buy time because this insane extractive economy is the only one we’ve got and we’ve gotta keep the big wheel turning – Kerouac’s “slaving meat wheel” – fermented dinosaur meat being the actual nutrient we now habitually inject into our depleted soils – jeez, it’s ALL bio-fuel now, and life competes directly with its own artifices for sustenance! Just look – the roads and bridges are built for the trucks that transport the huge transformers etc to maintain the power grid, to keep the TVs lit, to keep the drivers driving the cars, to generate the revenue to keep the roads and bridges flowing under the trucks that transport the huge transformers etc etc – giant fossil fuel wheel. And here’s Peak Oil. And Kurt Vonnegut was right – it’s like junkies when the city’s drying up. Panic ache! Baltic Dry down 93%! – With advanced accounting techniques, it must now be possible to calculate how many Google searches it takes to kill off another polar bear! I mean, everything’s got some kind of footprint now, right? That’s why CSI is so popular – we live in a Global Crime Scene.
Jane Jacobs was a hero of mine – she uncovered how cars were destroying communities – passed away a few years ago, soon after her last book came out, “The Coming Dark Age”, a well researched probing of the disintegrating civilization – and I heard her talking about it on CBC Ideas and she said something really interesting, she said she’d come to realize that the people who came to her talks who asked questions, most of them weren’t looking for more information – they already had too much of that – no, what they were looking for was reassurance – “and they should have it,” she said, with considerable emphasis, “because they need it!”
That immediately reminded me of McLuhan’s dilemma. He wrote, in “Understanding Media – the Extensions of Man”, that it’s easy to explain the effects of media – what’s difficult to understand is how we can have suffered such violence for so many centuries while remaining completely unaware of the cause. Not long after writing that, he rather suddenly understood the vital necessity of that unawareness – same thing Jane Jacobs grasped. The revelation quite terrified him – he’d been running around declaring the urgent need for attention to these effects all over the place. To make matters truly nightmarish, it was at this moment that the TV cameras swung onto him, TV interviewers all like “How’s that again,Perfesser?” – and then, every week, the prime time slot of the week, “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”, the guy whose head pops up out of the ground, shouting “Marshall McLuhan! Marshall McLuhan! What’re you doin’, Marshall McLuhan?” – and him all the time frantically asking himself that! (You see how much like a nightmare that is?) …He went looking hard for the solution, asking for help quietly, …and what he came up with was a kind of Mennipean Snakes-and-Ladders strategy. Every time he says something, he deploys a kind of amusing rubber escape chute, so folks can slide on outa there, wheee! – and there’s also a ladder tucked away in there, should anyone wish to exert themselves, and … dare to know! … ~ Cagey, isn’t he, yer old man?
Regarding what you say about Hitler, Stalin, Machiavelli: your father’s father’s father had a cousin, Andrew Balfour, who famously fingered the tse-tse fly in Africa, then went up the Amazon for eight years in search of the like, and when he returned to England he went to see your father’s father’s father’s father, Old Bill, and told him there was going to be a great war (The Great War), and Old Bill said “Nonsense! I have a seat on the Baltic Exchange, and I can see no prospect of war. You’ve been deep in the jungle of Brazil for 8 years, what can you possibly know about it?” – and Andrew said “I know the Germans are selling phonograph machines – up the Amazon, on credit!” – instantly changing Old Bill’s politico-economic outlook. (As I recollect, he set about cornering the turpentine – then lost it when the noble Belge scuttled the ship, lest it fall to the Bosch – he wasn’t insured against that particular outcome.)
About China I can’t think clearly at all. It simply boggles my mind. One thing overshadows all else, the spectre of ecological catastrophe – for China, Southeast Asia, India – all watered by the glaciers high in the Tibetan Plateau, rapidly shrinking – watered by the snowmelt they collect, less and less. Smaller glaciers store less snow – which otherwise seeps into porous mountain soil and then evaporates out. The glaciers regulate the hydrodynamics. It’s a co-ordinated grasping and releasing mechanism – like the Economy! – like Language! – like not crapping in your pants!
You know the cigarette pack image of the two boys, with “Don’t Poison Us!” (“De L’Air, S’il Vous Plait!”) – subliminally, y’know, those are the guys in the schoolyard who demand your lunch money. (Psychological Warfare everywhere – the Pentagon metastasized it in 1952 – to boost the economy!) – So, it’s like Michael Ignatieff just handed over our lunch money! I yam profoundly disgusted! – Worst of it is, I suspect that smarmy Harper’s Rovian strategists nailed their man! Yuck!
Hang in there, Old Son! It’s a good old game, the best there is!
Isn’t it?… Come on – of course it is!
Nice to know you two guys are talking. I still have letters from Lady Grace Balfour, Andrew’s wife. No one down here seems to worry about 97% of the wealth being controlled by 3% of the population. And they love to dog the 40 million poor who have no power and no jobs. And the health system is broken because of the FAT people with diabetes. love to all, sanny
This is becoming a Loose Association of Nuts.
Where’s the Bolt?
The answer has got to be in the answer to the question: why are there rich and poor and something in between?
Suppose all the people responsible for the hygiene in public washrooms and hospitals in North America went on strike. Shit!