This is the subject I was trying to discuss with you on that thread a few days ago, the one where I'd post about economics, and you'd go off on a tangent about how the wealthy deserve a tax break. I hope we make more progress this time around.

Wealth has to be produced, and it is capital investment that does it, not consumption.

First problem is, it's not wealth we need to create, it's subsistence. Too many people are out of work and hurting. The pool of employment has shrunk, so it's pointlessly cruel to keep saying "just go out and get a job, ya lazy bum." There aren't any jobs out there.

we give the poor a lot of money to spend, and bingo! They buy stuff and the companies make money and everybody is happy with trickle-up economics.



Okay, they show up at the stores with all this new demand, and where is all the new product? Unless someone ponies up capital ahead of time to meet the rising demand, nothing is there on the shelves. The producers can't take all the money the customers bring in and then use it to build a factory to make the products the customers want.



The crux of the matter...

America's productive capacity is being utilized at an average level of about 75%; 50% in some sectors like automobiles. Inventories are at correspondingly high levels. In plain English, the supply side is already too big in relation to demand. The problem isn't producing more stuff to buy, it's that people don't have the money to buy it.

The supply-and-demand equation is out of whack, and it's out of whack in the direction of oversupply. How in the hell will this supply-side stimulus plan from CEO Bush, MBA, do anything at all to help the economy? Try and forget political loyalty for a moment, and look at the numbers and the arithmetic. You can't get there from here.

OK, your move. Please, please, please don't richochet off on the tangent of tax breaks for the wealthy. That isn't the issue. The issue is whether a plan billed as economic stimulus will stimulate. I don't think so. Can you honestly defend what Bush The Elder called "voodoo economics"?

--Robert