Stimulus with Stipulations

With all this talk about "stimulus packages" being proposed by the Bush administration and now the Obama administration, I've been thinking - I think if any more dollars are printed out of thin air, driving the government further into insolvency, they should have some rules about how they're spent.

I think if any U.S. citizen receives a single cent from the government as part of a "stimulus package," (I'd call it bankruptcy package but that's just me) there should be a requirement that they only spend that money on goods and services sold by U.S. companies. Yes, what a novel idea.

If this isn't a stipulation of the stimulus checks, Joe Shmo will just take his check, cash it, then drive down to Wal-Mart and by some Chinese furniture, a Japanese television and some tacos.

But wait, I bet you're asking yourself why didn't the powers that be think of this? Surely they are smart enough to have thought of this. Well, if you don't understand why the government doesn't care if you spend stimulus dollars at Wal-Mart on Chinese crap, do some research on how U.S. GDP numbers are computed. About 70% of our GDP is based on "clownsumer" spending - so, basically the government is going to finance this quarter's/this year's GDP numbers by giving people free money that they'll go blow all over town because Americans can't save money.

Cover up the problem with duct tape and paint and superglue, but by God, don't try to actually fix it!