These strings include requirements to grant loans, hire employees, build infrastructure, provide services, or the like. The monies used with the strings attached are then supposed to restore economic stability or control the forces that started the economic crises. Or so we hope.

The presumption, apparently, is that such a scenario will produce better economic results for more people than leaving the taxed monies in the hands of those who earned it. With no economic stimulus package, the corporations and individuals in control of their own money would, so the argument must go, save, invest, and/or spend their own money in ways that would yield an economic outcome that is worse than what the government could produce by its stimulus packages.

As I understand it, the stimulus packages began under the threat of a small number of highly influential financial institutions nearing bankruptcy. The net effect these bankruptcies could have snowballed and rolled over the cliff into some really scary scenario. That does not seem to be where the stimulus packages are entirely focused today, but that’s where they began. Never mind international complications for now.

In any case, the principle presumption seems to remain. We the People elected our officials and their bureaucracies to save us from ourselves by taxing us and then giving the money to some of us so that all of us (or many of us or some of us) might be better off in the end.

Can our government save us from ourselves? I for one would rather hedge my bets. I don’t see the ends justifying the means, and I’m not sure what the ends are going to be. I can’t save the world, but I will do what I can within my sphere. How about you?

Peter Rubel
http://www.bestaffiliatefamily.com