So the scramble is on. The big splash water park ”” complete with a gym and “quality meeting space” ”” might sound like a waste of $22 million, but it would provide a nice stimulus for the people of Gastonia, N.C. The travel industry wants a $10 million loan to promote the U.S. as a destination, a tougher job these days. To the American Apparel & Footwear Association, this crisis only highlights the need to eliminate import tariffs on shoes. “Building self-esteem is critical,” explains Matt Rubel, CEO of the parent company of Payless, “and not having a new pair of shoes ”” you know, having a pair that’s tattered and doesn’t fit ”” that does not create good self-esteem.”
Let’s face it: fiscal stimulus is a frustratingly inexact science. Nobody knows precisely what it will do in the short term, and in the long term, it isn’t that different from any other government spending, except that the point of the spending can be the spending itself. As always, there will be winners and losers; it’s impossible to stimulate everyone equally. In two years, if the recession is over, skeptics will claim it would have ended regardless of the stimulus. If it lingers, proponents will credit the stimulus for preventing a drearier outcome. As with the first round of the financial bailout, its most important short-term effect will probably be psychological, calming markets by sending a message of government engagement.
It will be an expensive message, and we’ll be paying for it for a long time. Obama can’t control how markets or employers react, but he can use the opportunity to start keeping promises and start moving the country away from dirty energy, crumbling infrastructure and economic inequality. If he trades those goals for size and speed, he’ll blow a unique chance to chart a new direction. He doesn’t need to beg Congress to spend; that’s like begging Cookie Monster to eat. He needs to take a stand: No money without reform. That won’t just rebuild consumer confidence; it will rebuild citizen confidence too. As the shoe guy said, at a time like this, self-esteem is critical.
The overemphasis on free trade wrought lastig damage to this country. Correctives are required. We must encourage American manufacturing. If this means protective tariffs, bring’em on.
What we also need is retail outlets that focus on selling American-made products as much as possible.
Remember when Sam Walton was still alive, Wal-Mart was a ‘made in America’ corporation, focusing on products made in America, by Americans, for Americans. After his death, his heirs turned W-M into a sell products as cheaply as possible, regardless of where they are made. Now they’ve opened stores in China. We need a return to the Sam Walton model. Support American Made.
If Obama really wants to use this money to better the future of America, he’d use a few hundred billion to back financing for scores of new nuclear power plants. Clean, cheap and utterly independent of Mideast tyrants, it would go far in bringing us into the 21st Century, cut off as we were from this future 30 years ago by the forebears of today’s global warming alarmists.
Oh goodie. Protective tariffs. Combined with Pelosi’s insistence on higher taxes, 1930s, here we come. Hope it won’t be that bad; it isn’t yet, not by along shot.