The thing about people is that when it comes to money, they usually don’t listen to other people on how to spend it. Of course the government seems to think the best way to keep the economy working is to just hand out $300 checks and lower interest rates. Encourage more spending instead of savings and complain that if you buy something cheap, you’re causing a recession.Of course considering the government is run by a bunch of Keynesians, it would make sense to say that. Keynes was a paranoid moron who suggested that recessions were caused by excessive savings and that the best way to get out of a recession was to have the government deficit spend it’s way out. It’s a lot like saying that we should just charge up our credit cards until we’re rich again.
Recessions are part of the business cycle. Trying to have the government stop them won’t work because it’s like delaying the inevitable. Eventually, there will be a market correction that will change the way the market works. Recessions are usually deeper and longer if the government’s raising taxes, raising spending and going to war with half the world. I think the best example of market correction was back in 2000. During the late 90′s there was a lot of Venture Capitalist money being thrown at new Internet Companies. The Internet was still pretty new back then and everyone wanted in on the next big thing, the next Yahoo! or Amazon.com or eBay. Some of these companies got millions of dollars and hired offices full of people, but didn’t accomplish much of anything. Eventually companies that weren’t doing anything or providing a useful service were shut down. Thus, the market corrected problems that existed from easy money being thrown around at questionable businesses.
Really the best way to fix the economy is to cut spending, cut taxes (both by about 95%), bring all the troops home from overseas (not just the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in military bases around the world), cut tariffs, open up to more free trade, allowing more drilling for oil in the US, and real deregulation. In other words, let people have their money and spend it, save it or give it away as they see fit.
That would be part one of fixing the problem. The second part should be the disbanding of the Federal Reserve and the restoration of the gold standard in the US Currency. The fact is that without something to give the money value, inflation will continue on until a cup of coffee and a donut will cost us $150. The truth is that gas and food prices haven’t gone up as much as the value of the dollar has gone down.
So to sum up:
1. The government should stop spending so much fucking money
2. The government should get out of the way of the market.
3. The government should stop pissing off most of the world and bring our troops home, then establish good trade relations with the rest of the world.
4. The government should restore value to the money we use…
Maybe this is all a bit too simplistic to really fix the economy. But I think most of this would be a good start.