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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review January 30, 2009 / 5 Shevat 5769

A modest proposal

By Linda Chavez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | House Democrats passed a nearly trillion-dollar so-called stimulus bill this week at the urging of President Obama, but the spending may do little or nothing to get this economy moving again. Not even the president can explain how giving more money to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or $50 million more to the National Endowment for the Arts will stimulate anything but a good laugh. Most of the money in the bill will take so much time to work its way into the real economy, it's unlikely it will shorten the current recession or keep people from losing their jobs. Much of it will simply fund the pork-barrel projects dear to the heart of members of Congress. And with Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House, there will be no check on profligate spending.


But if we're going to have a trillion-dollar stimulus, here's a modest proposal for a better way to do it. This approach would cost about the same as the Democrats' current plan, but it could put money into people's pockets in weeks, not years.


Why not give every man, woman, and child in the United States $3,000 to spend on pretty much anything they choose. The price tag would be about $900 billion, barely more than what is in the House package now. But unlike the Democrats' plan, which has government making the decision about how the money should be spent, people would get to decide for themselves.


There'd be no limits on who could receive the money — a rich man would get the same three grand that a poor woman or child received. The program isn't intended to redistribute wealth, but to infuse the economy with cash. The only rule that would apply is that the money would have to be spent within a certain period of time, say 18 months. In addition, most of the money would have to be spent on buying things: payment toward a new or used car, down payment on a home, some new appliances, home remodeling, clothes, electronics, or even a vacation. Hey, you could even use it to put solar panels on your roof or erect a windmill in your background if that's what you wanted. But only a portion of the money could go to paying down credit card or current mortgage debt — say, a third — and then only if the person was already two months in arrears in their payments.


In order to keep this cash distribution about as simple as possible but still allow the money to be tracked so that we know that people are actually buying stuff not hording the money in their bank accounts, the government would disperse it in the form of debit cards linked to the individual's Social Security number. The government could surely subcontract this out to one of the large credit card companies for a small administrative fee charged to the cardholder, similar to what some companies charge now for gift cards. And recipients would receive a statement that they would have to submit with their tax return within the time period to ensure they played by the rules.


The virtue of this plan would be that the market would allocate the money far more efficiently than any scheme government bureaucrats could come up with. A young family of four would suddenly have $12,000 that they could use toward a down payment on a home or a new car. Imagine how quick the inventory in depressed housing would dry up if suddenly young families had that kind of cash to put down on a home. And automobiles would go racing off the car lots.


Now, of course, all this cash could be inflationary — government spending usually is. And we know all those debit cards would be paid for with borrowed money — but so is Nancy Pelosi's "stimulus package." Nonetheless, the beauty would be that consumer spending would bring the country out of recession, create new private sector jobs and protect existing ones, and the government would get back at least a portion of what it gave away in taxes from people who were suddenly working instead of drawing unemployment compensation.


Sure, this is a radical proposal. But no more so than the boondoggle House Democrats just passed. If we're going to borrow a trillion dollars, I'd rather ordinary people got to make the decisions about where it's going to go, not Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

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