COLUMN: Ideas for stimulus package
Wow, it is like a second Christmas as I await a festively-wrapped package of stimulus to arrive in the mail. Elsewhere, voodoo economists wait eagerly to see what consumers running through the rat maze of the economy will do with their new little piece of cheese. Will they put into savings? Will they buy TiVo for their cable TV package? Will they finally pledge to National Public Radio?
We just don’t know.
It’s like attaching the jumper cables to that dead 1976 Toyota rusting in your driveway. You don’t know if it just needs a jump start or if the thing needs to be hauled to the junk yard. You have to turn the key and see what happens. This economy just might need more than a jump start or stimulus. “Stimulus” is pretty odd terminology in a country that has declared most stimulants illegal, immoral or unhealthy. Stimulating the economy sounds vaguely pornographic when you really think about.
Since it is all speculation anyway, I have a few alternate suggestions to defibrillate the comatose economy.
1. A Drug Against Wars:
The war against drugs isn’t going so well, so why don’t we try the reverse? A drug against wars will save lives and money. People who aren’t trying to kill each other are more likely to buy snack foods and video games. Once they are plump and zombified by games, they won’t be able to fight even if they wanted to. Certainly the scientists that brought us Ambien and Xanax can come up with something that will bliss people out enough to keep them from fighting. I’ve even thought of a cool marketing name: Nowar@all. We can get Nowar@all to sponsor the next Super Bowl game.
2. Reboot the economy:
You know how the last resort to every computer problem is to just turn it off and start again? Do that with the economy. Part of our problem, is our national obsession with numbers such as the NASDAQ, DOW, prime lending rate, consumer confidence index, etc. These numbers really don’t mean anything other than they are relatively higher or lower than the previous time you measured them. Let’s just reboot and start at zero.
3. Get better economic indicators:
I propose a new unit of measure called The Consumer Chillin’ Index (CCI). This will take the emphasis off of consumer spending always being considered a good thing. Maybe sometimes we just want to stop spending, enjoy the stuff we have and take a nap. Maybe the stuff we bought is actually so good that it lasts a long time and we don’t have to buy new stuff. Maybe we just have too much stuff to fit in the house we have and we can’t afford a bigger house. Manufacturers might look at the CCI and say, “Hey I guess consumers aren’t buying as much stuff this year, let’s cut back on production.”
4. Find a new Ralph Nader:
Nader is getting pretty old, isn’t going to become president and there is no successor on the horizon. He and consumer education are becoming a distant memory to this generation. If we still had consumer education, maybe people wouldn’t be fooled by the idea that you could afford a $250,000 home on $35,000 salary. Maybe people would know that you couldn’t pay off your credit card debt by paying the monthly minimum. Maybe they would know that if you consume 10,000 calories a day and only burn 3,200 calories a day, you are going to get fat.
Dennis Hinkamp’s favorite stimulus package is one pound of the double French roast from the Staw Ibis. Dennis works for USU Extension Communications. Comments and questions can be sent to him at dennish@ext.usu.edu.