An economy grows by the creative intelligence of human beings. This is best encouraged by leaving wealth in the hands of those who create it.

The idea that you can stimulate investment, creation, and the development of new and different industries and services by simply shoving taxpayer money into the hands of consumers is ridiculous. You can increase demand for existing products, but that is a static situation.

Back in 1975, if I had given every consumer in America ten thousand dollars, it would not have created the personal computing industry. Creative people with new ideas had to take surplus wealth and go out and create an industry from scratch. Eventually, the consumers would help grow the industry, but the entrepreneurs are the root of all economic growth.

Look at what percentage of the current GDP is from industries and services that didn't even exist forty years ago.

To be blunt, you stimulate an economy by sucking a minimum amount of the wealth away from the productive into non-productive ratholes. That this pisses off those who make a career out of filling ratholes is not surprising. Allowing the productive to keep their own wealth is not the same thing economically as taking the money away from them and spending it on politically popular causes. Think about it. And that's leaving the morality of it aside.

But if you have faith that Ted Kennedy has a more productive place to put a million dollars than the leaders of a chip manufacturing company or a technological investment firm, I can't change that idea.

It doesn't take a lot of examples to show that the private sector does one hell of a better job at making life better for the average person than the government does. Just looking at the endpoints of the curve would convince most people.

I'm glad that you apparently have, by your account, at least forty million certified, badged, PhD'd and licensed economists on your side, and seemingly (again by your account) none at all on mine. So be it. I'm still right.