More Money for Everyone!
Friday, 3/12/2021 09:01
Biden's absurd stimulus explained...
YOU'VE already heard the news,
writes Bill Bonner in his Diary of a Rogue Economist.
Congress passed the latest spending lollapalooza...
...$1.9 trillion of rancid pork...
...money for working people...money for non-working people...
...money for cities...money for states...
...money for Planned Parenthood...
...money for "socially disadvantaged" farmers (We are puzzled. Does wheat grow less well for a farmer who is not a member of the local country club?)...
...money for K-12 schools...colleges...digital media companies (Why would they need money from the government?)...
...money for federal workers on leave...money for childcare and school lunches...for pregnant and postpartum women...
...for Amtrak and "communities under economic distress"...
...for testing animals for Covid-19...
...for foreign affairs...
...for science...for space!
Wait...What's all this got to do with Covid-19 relief?
Oh, don't be silly, Dear Reader. Most likely, not a single life will be saved as a result of this boondoggle. Nor does it really redress the harm done by government busybodies, when they created a panic and shut down the economy.
GDP fell about 2.3% last year. That's about $498 billion. Last year's "relief" measures have already offset that with $3.1 trillion. This latest "relief" package brings the total "stimulus" handed out by the feds in response to the coronavirus pandemic to $5 trillion – more than 10 times the actual economic loss.
And according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), many of these provisions in the latest "stimulus" package have sunset clauses...meaning they are scheduled to expire sometime in the future. That is how the total cost – as grand as it is – stays under $2 trillion.
But what will most likely happen is that as the sun begins to set, the politicians will agree to extend the programs. In the end, says the CRFB, the cost will probably end up closer to $4 trillion than to $2 trillion.
So what gives? Why bankrupt the nation? Here's Joe Biden's explanation:
"This legislation is about giving the backbone of this nation – the essential workers, the working people who built this country, the people who keep this country going – a fighting chance."
What a strange thing to say. Every penny the feds give away must come from the taxpayers...one way or another, sooner or later.
Even when they print up fungible tokens, representing Dollars that haven't even been earned yet...perhaps by people who have not even been born yet...all the wealth that those Dollars claim must be produced by the taxpayers; there's no other source.
And if they give to the backbone, they must take from somewhere else – the leg bone...or the skull. It is like a blood transfusion from the left arm to the right one – pointless and absurd – leaving the patient weaker than ever.
And if they give money to the people who "keep this country going," that is, to the truckers, the butchers, the ad men, the poets, and the chicken farmers – whose sweat and toil provides the products and services that keep the country housed, fed, clothed, and entertained – from whom will they take it? From people who don't work?
Left alone, the taxpayer, present or future, spends his money as he pleases. How does taking it away from him in order to hand it over to people who neither need it, earn it, nor have any right to it make him better off?
It is as if some magic happened...that this money – passing through the hands of the parasitic class of lobbyists, connivers, cronies, special interests, and the Deep State – is blessed, like holy water, so that it now gives the people from whom it is taken away a "fighting chance."
But this is La Bubble Epoch. Things don't have to make sense. They don't even have to add up.
Logical thought is a faux pas. Common sense is a hindrance. Experience, wisdom, and real skill are just part of the burden of patriarchy, to be shucked off and hidden away, like a Confederate monument, as soon as possible.
Yes, the entire nation has taken off its thinking cap and suspended its disbelief...so that even the most unlikely, mysterious, or miraculous thing will be greeted with a straight face...and treated as though it were a proven, scientific fact.
For who doesn't believe that more money from the feds will produce a boom? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says world growth is headed for 5.6% this year. Goldman Sachs is calling for 6.8% GDP growth in the US in 2021.
For surely, with so much new liquidity sloshing about, there is bound to be an increase in spending. And gambling. And wild-eyed weirdness.
Sure, consumer prices will rise. But that will be a good thing, no? Like giving the common man a pair of brass knuckles, no?
At least, that's what the pundits and sell-side philosophers will say. It will be a sign...that Joe Biden's big spend-a-thon was paying off.
For surely then, the economy will "take off"...and we will all enjoy a "temporary prosperity"...before the "permanent ruin" settles in.
Then, we will see that the fight was rigged all along...and that Joe Biden gave the working man not a "fighting chance."
Whatever happens, Joe Biden must be gambling that history will fumble...and give him credit, not for knocking out the poor working stiff with his reckless gamble, but for having been in his corner...helping him, encouraging him with a fantasy so obviously numbskull that it wouldn't fool a six-year-old.
And he's probably right. We're all on the internet now...and so well informed are we, that we're ready to believe anything. And when the history books are written, we may find Biden revered – like that other big humbug, Franklin Roosevelt – as a great hero.
And maybe, sitting around campfires many generations from now (the technique of central heating having disappeared when the great economic/financial/social bubble of the 21st century blew up), people will sing rousing ballads about how Joe Biden brought the country out of its post-Covid funk with his bold programs.
They'll recall how he scored his first success with his $1.9 trillion everything bailout...and was emboldened to go even bigger...with trillions more for a great infrastructure program (perhaps they will look around at unfinished highways...or the rusty tracks of a high-speed railway that never saw a locomotive...)
"He had the courage to act," they will chant (forgetting that former Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke had a copyright on the phrase).
Yes, Joe Biden continues in that heroic tradition...George W. Bush...Barack Obama...Donald J.Trump...
...all with the same basic, empire-destroying formula – make war abroad...spend money at home...bomb and print, murder and fraud...
...each administration taking it further and further...
...until finally, the poor working man is flat on his back.
Then, we see more clearly that the fight was rigged...and he never had a chance...
...and that, in 2021, Joe Biden delivered the sucker punch.
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