It's The Housing Sector, Stupid!

Where can you find a good mechanic?   I've taken my car from shop to shop, and spent lots of money but the car still runs poorly.   They hear a noise and then confidently say it needs this or that, so I pay to get this or that.   And they take the money with smiles and self assurance that the problem is solved, but it isn't.   Finally, one day a kid in the neighborhood checks out the car, works on it a little, and amazingly, no more problem.  He explained the problem, said it was easy to diagnose, and took care of it.

It baffles me that we have no good mechanic in Washington, just the same lame 'professionals' as in the story above.  Their 'solutions' for an economy running poorly have included giving $45 billion in additional work to road contractors who are covered up to their necks with work.   Giving $102 billion to local school boards who have enjoyed a windfall of up to 30% increased revenues over the last several years from the bubble in property values and taxes.  Just those two items in the so called 'stimulus' bill translates into an additional 'invoice' of $1,336 to each and every American household.

And meanwhile as Congress is taking from the not so well to do and yet born, and giving to the well to do, the economy stays in the doldrums with 10% official unemployment; more likely 15+% real unemployment.  A pretty lousy mechanic if ever I saw one.

Congress is good at giving away money to those who spend their professional lives sucking up to government.  They aren't the shovel ready as much as they are the beneficiaries of the grant writing ready.  Keeping government expenditures to normal levels would be a gift to those industries, a normalized level of business no other economic sector is enjoying right now.  Doubling down on that activity is about as foolish as things get in Washington, but never underestimate the stupidity of a government chosen from the people, by the people and for the few.

When the WPA was organized by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930's as one of several means to address the effects of the depression, the 'mechanics' were careful about their aims and their targets.  They reasoned that they needed to be careful about distributing the benefits of the program as broadly and equitably as possible.   Its aim was to provide economic sustenance to the many whose employment opportunities were choked off by the ill economy.  With the economy so ill, activity in many areas simply ceased, thus those who'd made a living in them had no private sector opportunities.

The WPA provided direct employment, and it wanted to assure it aided as many households as possible, thus one of its provisions was that only one person per household could be employed by the agency.  This type of thinking is far from the sort of mindset we have in Congress today.  The notion by the Democrats that they are following in the foot steps of FDR is as much hogwash as were the claims by Republicans that they were following in the footsteps of JFK in cutting the top tier tax rates.

It's good that my car isn't dependent upon those mechanics in Washington; it's too bad so much else is.

-RLee