If I remember 8th grade history right, the US joined Britain and allied with the Communists (Russia, China) in WWI to fight the Fascists (Germany & Italy) and an Emperor (kind of like a Fascist, but with more colorful outfits and better bling).

Slow down everyone and let’s see where the return of brains and smart people to the White House leads us. We certainly know where the previous Administration’s economic policies have left the country……in a deficit of stupendous and unbelievable and unacceptable proportions. There is no easy way out here.

What obama is doing is increasing debt, increasing union presence in business and making it harder to privately own businesses. I also work for a privately owned, non-union company who is also hiring a few people right now (in the manufacturing industry if you can believe that!). That is the key to what so many of us are saying. The answer is to support privately owned, non-union busnesses in the US in order to create jobs (you and I work for companies proving that right now!!)

Doing the wrong thing can be just as bad if not worse than doing nothing!

The worst thing is a stimulus package and governement spendong on infrastructure like the federal
jobs program.

The reason is the same reason that the subprime mortgage meltdown happened. When you let
the government try to do good they do it with their own agenda. When they got involved in the
mortgage market they seemed to be doing good until they enforced lending money to poor people
and it collapsed. Similarly every government handout has “invisble foot” consequences.

No federal state or local economic stimulus package has ever worked to stimulate the economy.
Remember, government workers don’t create wealth, they just sap it from the productive sector.

And let’s not forget that the government’s agenda is relection. They will do everything they can
to buy votes. Any stimulus package will have tons of goodies inserted for the government employees
for the labor unions, for “education” and for liberal agendas of all sorts.

In case anyone has the time (and the patience) to read the entire stimulus package,you can find it here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1:

Luckily, I do not work in the automotive sector. I work in government as well, but we are currently looking into consolidating services with the County (HR, IT, payroll, dispatch), which should save our municipality some money. Unfortunately, I think this will ultimately lead to more job losses, which our state definitely DOES NOT need more of at this point.

I agree with you HR/Training Director that Americans need to spend money to get our economy jump-started. Unfortunately, those who are unemployed may be more prone to hold on to that money. If there was to be a stimulus check for Americans, it would be nice if there was some way the money could be earmarked to be only spent on goods and services (or bills or mortgage payments) as opposed to being stashed away in a bank account.

Also for RJB and Lajeli thank you for pointing out exactly what I mean with the fact that the banks and credit card companies have made it to easy for someone to get money beyond their income…the only thing people look at is I could use some money to buy something and it is given to them. Would I buy a home that is beyond my reach absolutly no way! I do have a home that I would like to refinance to lower my payments and get a lower interest rate, however I did try that after 2 years of my current loan and here is what happened 2 years ago my home was worth $106,000.00 I make my payments every 2 weeks and I am ahead on my payments, a couple of months ago I had the house appraised to refinance and well with the economy it is now only worth $93,000.00 and in the past year I remodled a room and put over $3000.00 into it. I lost out all together.

Things are starting to get tight with my financial budget at home and if I had the chance to get a larger stimulus check that could pay off the house or other bills, the money I would go to that and the money in my pay check would then give me the chance to spend it in other areas to help boost the economy.

Now do I think everyone would use the check for that purpose no! But the money they would get would be spent on things that they want but could not afford before like a car, appliances, or what ever that would start the economy going again. I personally don’t think they would hold on to it, because holding on to it is not going to help them other than having money in the bank. I think most Americans know that we need to spend money to keep our economy going and if they were given that money that is what they would do with it.