Reply #39: I beg to differ. [View All]

[lapfog_1]

25% unemployment are numbers we haven't seen since the great depression, if then. This current downturn may do to us what a combination of events did to the old Soviet empire. But to not attempt to address the unemployment issue adequately, well we will STILL end up with that bond rating problem... only a little bit later (as tax revenues fall off a cliff because no one is working), plus we will have the unanswered problem of unemployment.

So this isn't a choice between one or the other, it's a choice of "bad bond rating now, more interest in the future, but more employment to help with revenues" OR "massive unemployment AND bad bond rating 1 year from now"

I choose more debt now for more employment now. Increased taxes to help pay off that debt (we need to run surpluses for 2 decades at least, but not start for 5 years).

In fact, we should go ahead and finance another 1 trillion dollar program to come up with highly distributed green power generation and conversion of our auto and trucking fleet to electric. If nearly every house had generation capability, the grid would not need to be replaced or upgraded.

Yeah, it puts us in massive debt. But at least we will start climbing out of the hole after we dig it another 5 feet down. Not sending all of that money to other parts of the world for their oil would be a big help. Converting the auto fleet to newer cars that are electric would fix up Detroit too. Not to mention that we would be going "green" much faster than the current bullshit Cap and Trade stuff would have it. And building and installing all those micro wind turbines and solar panels would create 100s of thousands of jobs. And it's an investment that we pay for over 20 years.