For a Few Trillion More

Dr. X, who no doubt is busy trying to extract some remnant marrow of the bear bones* of the market this week, recently proposed buying everyone in the United States a car as a reward for voting, which would be cheaper and better for the environment and economy than the totality of Administration's deficit spending in the last four miserable years.

As long as we're tossing trillions around, how much would it really cost to give everyone who wanted one a job, in exchange for voting? You can take the 5.6 unemployment rate and employ people who wanted to work doing useful things - rotating America's tires, or repairing the national infrastructure, or cleaning up the environment or teaching children or providing primary care screening, at say a passable $25,ooo a year for 8,774,000 unemployed.

To get a grip, let me total $50,ooo per job including salary, admin, support, and related costs, and you get a mere $438.7 Billion/ year- a pittance really -and a presumably massive reduction in discretionary social spending- to drive the employment rate to zilch.

Econ 101 says this will cause inflation. Histrionics, and worse, an article of supply-demand orthodoxy. How much inflation did giving vast trillions to the wealthy cause? (To be fair, not much, as lots of this cash, courtesy of the grandchildren of the American people, was undoubtedly stuffed into Cayman accounts). If the last four years proves anything, it's that deficit-driven supply side stimulation is a pile of stale moose turds, mere evidence that the moose is still there. What this would do is drive up salaries at Wal Mart, as labor becomes more scarce, driving down profits at wage slave stores. I employ an old amateur economist's expression: Tough titties.

This also begs the question, how much is Iraq, say, on E-Bay? Bids start at 280 Billion - is that an unreasonable cash offer for the entire country? I mean, good lord, how much could North Korea possibly be?

*This pun, with it's nicely triple-pointed edge, was, I think, regrettably unavoidable