A “Stimulus Package”? – Thomas Sowell @ Townhall.com

Another great piece today from Thomas Sowell at Townhall.com entitled, A “Stimulus Package”?

Mr Sowell discusses the stimulus package the Congress and White House developed to help us through the upcoming economic crisis this year. I had to agree with Mr Sowell’s assessment of bipartisan approach versus a partisan approach on this legislation:

That alone should be enough to make us remember that “the devil is always in the details,” because things that are bipartisan are often twice as bad as things that are partisan.

Everyone in Washington thinks they are doing us favors by giving us this money. But, if look closely sometimes the money is not going to the hard working people who need it. In fact, if someone starts to complain that they are not getting any relief, the package is just grows and eventually is not helping anyone. So, should the government do anything to help us through this stuff point in the economy?

Well, Mr Sowell makes a good point about what government can do:

The idea of a stimulus package is based on the general notion that there are things the government could do to make things better in the economy.

Unfortunately, there is a vast difference between what the government could do and what it is likely to do.

One of best ways government could help us taxpayers would be make the tax cuts permanent. But, this not approach they are taking in this election year. Those running for election want to be re-elected and giving us some sweets by throw a couple hundred dollars back to us by this summer. But, another good way is actually to do nothing. As Mr Sowell points out through our recent history:

There are too many examples of government interventions that made things worse, the Great Depression of the 1930s being the most tragic.

Those on the left love to believe that the stock market crash of 1929 showed the failure of the free market and that the New Deal interventions in the 1930s saved the day.

But the stock market crash of 1987 was just as big and Ronald Reagan resisted loud calls for him to intervene. The result was not another Great Depression but the beginning of a decades-long period of prosperity.

In this case, the government should learn its lesson from the 1980s and do nothing to stimulate the economy. The best thing is to free the taxpayers from shackles of tax burden we are currently under by reducing our taxes and cut woeful earmark spending both parties have been doing this past 10 years.

Otherwise, Mr Sowell point out, we will only make short-term problem into a long-term problem.