Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

[Capitalists] put me in mind of some men I have seen who,
when they had the chance to buy a
widow's cow for ten cents on the dollar of her real value in cash,
would then make the purchase,
and then thank the Lord that he had so blessed them.
Such men belong to the class of Christians
referred to on one occasion by Charles Gunn; and, if you will excuse me,
I will tell you what he
said about them. He said that 'hell is full of such Christians'
--Working Toward Zion, Brigham Young

My name i' Borat, I come a-from Kazakhstan.
Can I say a-first, we support your War of Terror.
May we show our support for our boys in Iraq.
May U.S. and A kill every single terrorist.
May George Bush a-drink the blood of every single
man, woman, and child of Iraq [crowd cheers]
--Borat (2006)

Greed is good
--Gordon Gekko
_________________

There are things that we reflexively subscribe to in America. Among these maxims are, Babies are Cute, Free Markets and Capitalism are Essential Elements of our Democracy, and Government Must Stimulate the Economy During Times of Economic downturn.

First: Babies are not cute. They are ugly wrinkles of flesh, mottled and occasionally spotted with hair, gifted with shrieking lung capacities far exceeding their size. With their large, misshapen heads and vacant stares, a few en masse could easily make for midget nemeses in a zombie movie.

If we were honest, we would say they were large, maggot-like sacs of ego until they bust out and reach an age of compassion; not all will make it, though society will use them, nonetheless. (But of course, we're not honest, and proprietary interests coupled with a lack of interesting other issues make the zombie babies the go-to topic for every family.)

Were it not for the assiduous application of Johnson's products and take-away nappies, they would smell and flake, with a flourish for directing mashed food into their body folds. If their putrid daily routines were witnessed in an elderly care facility, the viewer would assuredly NOT be cooing.

Second: Free market capitalism is a social as well as an economic relationship. We have unbridled faith in capitalism, except when we don't. These reactions are always based on jump-through-the-ass panic fomented by our Leaders. It is difficult to unravel the social and economic interplay, but we want to focus on stimulus spending.

Third: The very future of our nation and the welfare of America devolves to stimulus spending. However, if we actually believed in capitalism, this stimulus concept would be anathema.

Capitalism is based upon a long-forgotten and basic concept: There will always be winners and losers, and this fact is essential to progress. The losers either change, or are left behind. The idea of a stimulus that will bring everyone along is a chimera pandering to the masses, but actually only benefiting those who know how to prosper anyway.

The concept of stimulus only passes muster IF the government has the money to spend to stimulate growth and prosperity. It makes no sense to borrow money that we do not have to maybe improve the situation.

There is no indication that any of the expenditures have trickled down to the unemployed worker level. The New York Times reported on the New Poor, who can expect to stay that way, many without a safety net, for years to come. But there is plenty of indication that the the economic sectors in which the Big Fish swim have benefited mightily.

The current economic dogma says essentially when free market capitalism screws up in a Big Way, government should pull our collective bacon out of the fire by doing something that exactly opposes our philosophical underpinnings. Meanwhile, Keynes is still dead. We expect government to become the economy.

That's not good, and it's bad.