What could Obama have proposed instead of tax cuts? Some very quick examples:
Example: if you want houses refit to be energy efficient, say that Freddie and Fannie will refinance (not rewrite, refi, then it doesn’t matter who owns them) mortgages to reduce the payment amounts by the value of the refit plus some, the government will make up the difference. Specify exactly what is required to get the improved mortgage rates, and have inspectors check the work, even offer some upfront credit to get the job done. (You can easily dump in hundreds of billions into this. It also allows you to backdoor refi a lot of houses – you can refi at current mortgage rates sort of no matter what, so once people do it they’ll get a huge savings if they were in a bad mortgage).
Example: for new buildings, if they meet specified energy requirements, give them a 1% lower mortgage rate. If they are net energy producers, give them a 2% lower interest rather than otherwise. The government pays the difference.
Example: offer a rebate for people to buy cars that are fuel efficient beyond a certain level.
Example: do a car buy back of the worst 10% polluting/fuel inefficient cars.
Example: give public transit authorities a 10% budget increase with a mandate to increase service.
Example: California doesn’t have enough fire fighters. Offer to pay to increase the size of the fire fighting corps by 50%
Example: hire artists to start beautifying various cities/towns with murals, painting of graffiti and in depressed areas of town
Example: change to energy efficient lightbulbs in every building in the union
Example: put up high speed wireless in every city in the union (the stuff goes up fast, it doesn’t need that much infrastructure)
etc… Give me a trillion dollars to spend, and I’ll find ways to spend it and ask for more.
What are your fast ways to do a stimulus which actually spends money to both restructure and reignite the economy?
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So…a trillion dollars. Is that a lot?
Zed?
“Example: do a car buy back of the worst 10% polluting/fuel inefficient”
If this is an attempt to kill muscle cars, count me out.
Retrofitting homes in the northeastern US is probably a win win. Low cost of insulation, they save money on fuel costs, people dont freeze to death. I like it.
build and/or rebuild k-12 schools so that normal class size is 15-18. hire a shit load of teachers.
In my guise of mild mannered subway musician, i performed at the Wall Street Station on both Christmas Eve (one end), and New Year’s Eve (the other end).
With a hat tip to Harry Chapin, I was the dance band on the Titanic. Literally. No one there knows where the bottom is, but they know we’re nowhere near it.
There is a really big chance that 50 years from now, 1929 will be called “The Pretty Good Depression.”
Digg is open
I like it when posters propose positive alternatives as opposed to pissing and moaning. Well done, Ian.
OT, but I’ve been away for a while.
Dugg, thanks for opening it.
Thanks Ian.
ah. so we’re making suggestions and you’re going to piss and moan?
big grants to public libraries.
No, I am celebrating that positive suggestions are being made.
how much would it cost to convert an entire city to solar? how much would it cost not to?
Here’s my proposal for all of California.
http://agonist.org/synoia/2008…..able_water
sweet – ty
Upgrading the insulation of homes in the Southwest also would help. There are a lot of homes that have single pane windows, very little venting and insulation. My home is an example. In the last 10 years I have replaced 4 of the windows, added another layer of attic insulation and new 13 seer AC. Each time I could tell the difference when I did something. The insulation helped a lot this summer and the new AC dropped my power bill to the point where on the level payment plan I didn’t use the credit this summer.
We’re facing a coming nursing shortage. It can’t be fixed quickly because we have too few professors of nursing. So: Enlist RNs who want to be instructors and house them, put them through a course so they’re ready to start teaching.
Then give full scholarships to nursing students plus housing.
Trade Soccer Moms for Hockey Moms
… *ducks and runs* …
Ian !
I can’t believe that school busing wouldn’t save tons of money if used properly. Parents driving kids to school both ways in SUVs seems kinda barbaric to me.
{{{{{{{ katymine }}}}}}}
The d*vil is in the details … create so much demand for retrofit and the price spikes, making it prohibitively expensive, unless the Gov’t regulates prices …
Case in point … we’re seeing a big demand for tankless water heaters in Canuckistan and as a result, getting a good one installed is 3K+ … too much for regular folks.
excellent – that is exactly the kinda small stuff that can be done in every home, every business.
replace the lightbulbs. use alternate energy sources. replace every single pane window in every building, eliminate drafts and insulate to locally mandated standards. on the fed dime or proportionate depending on income.
it could be voluntary not mandatory but having crews that come in and do an audit on each location – then a crew comes in and does the work and after inspection, a certificate is issued stating the location is certified and eligible for xy or z – would certainly employ a lotta folks and wean our dependence on oil.
Hey Petro!!! Good to see you.
I say we let the li’l rescals trudge to school … we would reduce CO2 emissions and slay childhood obesity … *g*
My proposal would be to design a good state and local government bailout for cut-backs in services (which would include a requirement that states not engage in irresponsible behavior, which would include upper bracket income tax cuts).
Then deduct most of that sum from the tax plan, starting with the worst parts of the tax plan.
I never thought Obama was a liberal, but I was hoping for strong leadership from the center on domestic policy. Doesn’t look like we will get that. So, need to press his administration to do sensible policy.
I suggest building new, bigger and better medical schools and teaching hospitals. Of course, building and equiping these institutions will stimulate the economy. Plus, if we increase the number of MDs by 25%, consider the benefits in terms of medical costs and the general quality of life in the future.
… oops, forgot yer hug … ((( Loo Hoo )))
Agree on school busses – I regularly wrote to our reps in Virginia arguing that for drug prevention as well as reduction in energy/fuel use, school busses for after school activities made so much sense. Hundreds of parent cars on the beltway – why. We could just as easily pick them up from our town centers if the bus schedules could be extended to after hours.
North Carolina Jobless Claims Crash State’s Web Site
I guess they could use some job creation in NC?
True, Suz. What a major job that would be.
in lieu of military service, a program when one could join the health corp – get free schooling for rn or md or dds, etc. – a year or two of health care done at a va facility would pay off housing costs incurred while at school.
Love teaching hospitals, but in all honesty there are too many teaching hospitals, way way too many hospital buildings, and even too many physicians. There is a distribution problem that we need to address. But more money for buildings, even for places like my beloved Mass General? I’m sorry it’s just not a good use of funds.
True enough! (and hugs!!)
A public lands perspective: Buy out BLM and Forest Service lands grazing permits (there are already willing permit sellers out there) – or just terminate permits in important areas. Permanently retire those grazing allotments – i. e. privately owned cattle and sheep will never again be allowed to graze on these public lands. This allows the lands to undergo passive restoration and naturally sequester carbon, “produce” abundant clean water which is desperately in need in the arid West, and gets rid of the climate change gas methane being produced by the welfare cattle and sheep now on the public dole on public lands. Then, employ folks as another part of the stimulus/a New Deal for the West, in recovering the grazing-damaged lands. Jobs include re-seeding with truly native species and not super-hybrid cultivars that have been bred primarily to produce “forage”. Remove hundreds of thousands of miles of horrible barbed wire fencing that entangles wildlife that is strung across these lands. Recycle the metal of course. Much of this work would have to be done on foot due to the nature of the terrain. Remove and restore as best as possible the hundreds of thousands of spring-gutting projects (springs are dug into and de-watered for livestock with water piped to troughs – and this often kills or alters surface flows of water). Remove and restore as best as possible hundreds of thousands of stock ponds strung across public lands that foster West Nile mosquitoes, disrupt drainage networks, and diminish downstream flows. Have a permanent Corps of Watershed Stewards who would replant, deal with weeds, etc. rather than what we have now which is grazing abuse by one or two big Cattlemen. Cattlemen indulged in what is a maximally inefficient and planet-damaging enterprise. See http://www.audubonmagazine.org…..point.html
The issue is that someone needs to push the AMA to lift the limit on the number of medical students & limits on the specialties….. THEY have been a big part on why there is a MD shortage…….
Nursing is another story….. not respected, treated like crap, paid worse and I knew the profession was in trouble when there were more med students than nursing students….
Where should the money go? Tuition?
end subsidies to the corporate farmer conglomerates and start supporting local farmers as part of a green buy local program.
if there are empty lots in a city, they are declared urban gardens. any and all extra crops go to local food banks. fund each city to provide water for each garden and develop composting programs.
In the cities that may be true but if you look at the “plot” of Northern Exposure where the town paid for a guy to to complete his MD so they would have a doctor. That is true in huge areas in the rural areas. People have to drive 100 plus miles to see someone and a lot more to find a specialist. In Elko NV, people drove into Salt Lake to see specialists and to have complicated surgery.
Agree this is a problem, but I think it’s one of distribution, not total numbers.
Too many MDs? Well, I can’t agree with you there. This year newly minted MDs are starting at $250K and on up. Vast areas of the country can’t
attract practitioners at any price. It is true that in some of the tonier places in this country there is an abundance of physicians. That wouldn’t include a lot of the Burnt Stumps and Gooosepecker Hollows in this country. Yet, these same backwater places attract other professionals.
Now, I would agree there may be too many general hospitals. But, my suggestion, perhaps not well enough defined, would be to build brand new state of the art teaching hospitals for MDs, PAs and nurses. We can use these and they will pay dividends for decades.
There are very few new medical graduates making $250,000 a year. Link? It certainly is not the average. Plus most grads have staggering debts to pay.
I have lived in many small towns across the country…… Wickenberg AZ, Mt Home ID, Elko NV, even Placerville CA where the citizens has to drive to the nearest large city to obtain care. In Elko, it was 200 miles in any direction to a large town, Salt Lake, Reno/Tahoe or Boise…… These towns cannot support high income MD’s and many do NOT want to live in podunk USA……
My sons are my links. One graduated last year and the other is in his second year.
The debts are no more staggering, actually less so, than teachers or social workers.
Yes, I know they don’t. Yet, most of these towns [Podunks], such as the county seat town I live in, have plenty of lawyers, CPAs, engineers and professional educators.
I think, in part, the scarcity of MDs and nurses in the hinterlands and the tremendous unsustainable increase in medical costs in this nation is related to the limited number of slots in these professional schools.
Here is an AP article published yesterday.
http://www.google.com/hostedne…..QD95H6AAO0
These are such smart, sensible ideas. I cannot figure out why the Obama team has suddenly abandoned their brains and not been able to come up with similar (or identical) plans. What is going on?
improve infrastructure – the electric grid, bridges. pay people who know how to teach and help people install gardens. build homes for the homeless. fund services for our veterans. of course, if we came home from iraq and afghanistan, we’d have lots more money to spend. and even more if we rolled back tax cuts for the wealthy.
fund environmental organizations so we can eliminate pollution. fund campaign finance reform.
FUND INDEPENDENT MEDIA.
Ian;
Great post!
How do you propose a ladder up for people who have minimal life skills – showing up for work on time, completing their assignments on time, etc?
They’ve voted in the past and will vote again. They voted down Prop 87 in California. They were told that the ’green’ future was not their future and it would cost them. They don’t see the programs your presenting as a ladder up.
It’s easy to extend new energy jobs to at-risk youth and low-income minority communities. It’s much easier not to do so.
There’s the political trap and the political opportunity: Extend a hand, especially when we all need a hand.
The only way we’ll be rescued from this economy is if we rescue everyone. The wealthy don’t understand, at least most don’t.
Nationalize health care. Yeah, more nurses…and more nurses converting to MDs too. Reduces the huge financial burden on the American people. Money saved can be spent on other things…like making mortgage payments?
More energy efficiency in all federally subsidized buildings and infrastructure projects. Creates greater demand for energy efficient services and products.
Trade-in rebates on the 10% worst polluting vehicles. Jump starts auto/vehicle industry.
Subsidize trash cleanup projects. Gets every section of major road and all urban streets cleaned up.
Comprehensive federal survey of the nations infrastructure needs. This would employ a lot of people checking out roads, bridges, nations power-grid, water resources, telecommunications, shipping, etc. The initial survey information would be data submitted by the state. Information missing or believed to be outdated or inaccurate would be verified in the field by data gathering teams hired for the survey.
If the economy is not recovering, begin implementing projects based on obvious needs as determined by the current survey data. Pass a bill authorizing at least one major project in every state in the union for infrastructure priorities.
Actually fund and clean up more the nation’s contaminated and decrepit structures and sites. (I’m thinking that Detroit alone might well employee hundreds of thousands of folks for years here…)
Vertical Farming
Advantages of Vertical Farming
Massive investment in HVDC High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines.
Loo Hoo:
In my neighborhood in Queesn, the mothers and fathers, sit outside the bus stop in the SUV’s with the kids, so they don’t have to stand in the weather!