I suggest focusing on some specific innovation and not general stimulus (0.00 / 0)

I see a 2nd generalized stimulus failing.  Sorry.

But maybe if they dedicated it to, say, 3 major investment programs (energy, infrastructure, whatever), so that the theme is advancing some particular and grasped concepts rather than "stimulus", it might work.

Plus it'd be an opportunity to do giant projects which need to be done anyway.

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by: El Cid @ Thu Mar 12, 2009 at 08:30:11 AM CDT

Would be nice if (0.00 / 0)

they could focus more on small business.  I'm laying off people this month and there's nothing in Stimulous #1 to prevent it.

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by: Electric Chili @ Thu Mar 12, 2009 at 09:27:59 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Can you be more specific? (0.00 / 0)

Lots of the "stimulus" people talk about when they talk about helping small business focuses on increased capitalization for equipment, faster write-offs of expenses, and tax breaks. But in a down economy, where the problem is a broad lack of demand, none of these traditional "incentives" are at all helpful to small businesses. You're probably having to layoff employees due to there being fewer or smaller customer orders. How could the stimulus help increase demand for your business?

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by: jeffbinnc @ Thu Mar 12, 2009 at 14:01:09 PM CDT

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extraordinary proposals? (0.00 / 0)

My brother-in-law has discussed with me a couple times how frustrated he's been with Obama and the Dem caucus so far in that what they've done to this point has been rather pedestrian.  He feels that Obama has so far squandered the opportunity to do something extraordinary.

So, are we just going to find decent ways to spend more money, or are there grand ways to really make a long term difference?  Or are we just going to spend our way through this recession, and emerge on the other side just status quo?

Unfortunately, these extraodinary economic measures are sort of like porn:  he (and I) can't define them, but we'll know them when he sees them.

So, what are some extraordinary, or historic, or 'game changing' measures that could be proposed?

There have been a couple things that I've thought about for a while which might fall into that arena. The first relates to overall privacy and ownership of one's personal information and data that ends up in the hands of private organizations.  I'm sure we can all name specific examples of how companies mine this data and use it in their best interests rather than our own.  But trying to limit that on a case by case basis is folly.  We need a modern right to privacy.

THe other place where I think some of the overall imbalance in our modern society exists is the relative stature of mega-sized organizations vs individuals in legal and political realms.  The power, prestige and influence of giant organizations is obviously magnitudes greater than that of individual citizens.  The scale of that difference needs to be addressed.

I'm not sure if those concepts are worth persuing at this time, or if this dicussion is even in the right context.  I do know, however, SUPERTRAINS alone aren't going to solve all our problems.

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by: lutton @ Thu Mar 12, 2009 at 10:08:43 AM CDT

Stimulus == get the money out now (0.00 / 0)

If you are actually serious about getting the economy going, you can't do that.  Most of the money needs to go out as quickly as possible, which is counter to some really huge, long term project.  Also, spreading the money around to different parts of the economy is better than concentrating it.  We need blue, white and green collar jobs created.

That said, I don't completely disagree.  In particular, I'd like to see high speed rail become the signature project of the Obama administration.  Thematically it in compasses many of the other projects, like the smart power grid, but in a more visible way.  

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by: Mark Matson @ Thu Mar 12, 2009 at 11:33:42 AM CDT

[ Parent ]