A recent news headline caught my attention: Representative Maxine Waters Calls For A Trillion-Dollar Jobs Program.
After reading that I feel obliged to make a few sarcastic comments. (A privilege that I don’t abuse through over-use, as the editor of SurvivalBlog.com):
Well, gosh, Maxine, if your “spending money that we don’t have creating wonderful economic prosperity” concept is so iron-clad, then why not go whole hog by pouring even bigger buckets of slop into the public trough? Why not spend $20 trillion to create zero unemployment? There would be jobs for everyone.
We could develop whole new categories of jobs! For example, people who only like to watch television could be given “television monitor” jobs, at say, $100,000 per year. And people who only like to shop at the local mall could be given “economic stimulator” jobs, at say, $200,000 per year. And what about people that don’t like working at all, but who love to eat? We could make them “American Tourism Ambassadors”, and pay them $400,000 per year to take cruise ship tours all around the world, for 50 weeks of each year.
We shouldn’t look at this $20 trillion in “stimulus” as increasing the National Debt. After all, we’ll just “Owe it to ourselves”, right? The money will just cycle back through the system, creating even greater wealth. And with all that magically-created prosperity, we can just “Buy more gum balls”! (Note: “Quantitative Easing refills are sold separately.”)
Oh, and Maxine, just think of it: Your constituents will love you for this, and they’ll want to elect you over and over again! (Yes, you can have a 12th term in congress. You might even get to stay in office for your whole life!)