Please reference my above post regarding contracting-out. You think Obama is that dumb? He wants to grow PRIVATE sectors jobs, which depend on contracts and business from the govt. If you took even basic macro economics, you would know that the GOV is a huge buyer.spender in the private economy.

“I don’t want to sacrifice freedom for financial safety. I don’t want the government to run the banking industry, the auto industry, and whatever else might go under. Business go under.”

You are blinded by ideology -and this is always bad, as it stops people from understanding and fixing problems. WORRIED about “sacrificing freedom” for “security” why have you not taken to the streets protest wiretapping and other illicit power abuses and trampling on our civil liberties by the Bush Admin?
YOU may be fine losing your job – but the Gov has problems on its hands when all business start failing — perhaps YOU want to have another great depression, but the majority does not. The O admin will use public money to create private jobs – upstart jobs, which upstart the economy, which increases wages and TAXES, which helps the govt. in the end, which further helps business, plus they get to use the subsidized infrastructure, workers use the infrastructural, easier to get to work, more efficiency, leads to more jobs, more worker and business efficiency, more taxes, prosperity for all. Get it? – or does ideology still blind you?

HELLO – ever heard of contracting out?

The Gov. never “builds” or “runs” anything itself – it contracts out to private business – Duh people, get with it.

You say WWII was better in helping the US out of the great Depression because industry was busy producing tanks and bombs? WHO DO YOU THINK PAID for those tanks and bombs? Who do you think awarded the contracts to make the war materials – YEP – the US GOVT. (is, the taxpayers)

I much rather have the US pour money in to useful things like infrastructure, network connection – and energy grids – than war materials, don’t you? We are far behind Europe- learn economics and look up what “positive externalities” are – its a form of market failure, btw, in which private interest doesn’t price positive societal benefits in in to making a private investment decision, thus there is too little of the good – in OUR case, TOO LITTLE infrastructure investment, and TOO MUCH WAR.

I don’t see you all ‘up in arms’ about the money we are/have been throwing away in the black hole called IRaq and shady no-bid Blackwater deals.

Maybe, invesmtnet in education is not a bad idea, i see.

I think we need to start saving and spending money wisely. That’s the solution to this problem. But that is not what will happen.

A little history lesson for ya. The New Deal was based off of a state run program in New York put in place by Al Smith. It worked for awhile. Personally I think WW2 helped get us out of the depression more than anything else. But New York state kept it’s new deal policies until the 70s when it ran them into the ground. They asked for a bail out from the fed but they didn’t give it to them.

I don’t want a new deal. I don’t want a government job. I don’t want to sacrifice freedom for financial safety. I don’t want the government to run the banking industry, the auto industry, and whatever else might go under. Business go under. A good business man keeps that from happening.

But I’m not opinionated or anythin.

Chris hit the nail on the head.

The scary thing is how far this country has moved toward socialism in the past decade (the move started much earlier than that, but the past decade is particularly bad). I don’t even know if a free market really exists any more.

Oh well… if it looks like they’re going to start taking away my guns and my gold… I’m on the first boat out of here.

People think that infrastructure rebuild is the ticket. Really? Is infrastructure really that bad? If so, then the free market moves away from it until it gets better. It gets better when opportunity is there, not when mandate is there.

I appreciate public transportation. I like freeways. I’m a fan of cops and firefighters. What I’d love to see, though, is government to stop borrowing, start spending modestly, and get the heck out of my economy so that it can take care of itself. This business cycle has to happen to flush the dead weight out. No government can do it for itself.

You can’t just tell the market to do something. They’ve tried that, and it failed. See Soviet Union.

If the recent crises are any indication, I doubt Americans have the stomach or the fortitude to do what is necessary to pull themselves out of this any time soon, particularly now that most production and manufacturing jobs are outsourced to developing nations, and fewer people in this country really know how to work hard, let alone want to.

We should be prepared for runaway inflation that will follow on the heals of all of this big spending. Unfortunately most of this spending is going to be gobbled up by the huge beaurocracies of the federal, state, and local governments, and it will be suprising if it creates more than 65% of the jobs that are intended to be created.

I believe that one of the main reasons these newfangled economic stimulus packages will have little impact in the economy is that they assume that it will encourage people to spend more, and this will create a boost. I suspect that most people would be using it to pay down their debt on high interest credit cards — something that is not likely to give a very big bang for the bucks.

Runaway consumer credit debt is one factor that was not present in during the Great Depression. The Gold Standard is another: We now have no Gold Standard to move away from in order to get out of this mess.

How wise we would have been (as a nation) to have listened to our grandparents’ advice that in good times, we need to prepare for bad times.

That said, Obama also needs to address how he’s going to pay for everything. During the campaign, he promised a balanced budget in 4 years. Achieving that, at a modest inflation rate, will no doubt be a very tall challenge. Fortuantely, the Iraq war is finally looking like there’s an end in sight. Without that major draw on our bank account, Obama’s got a fighting chance of achieving his goal.

@Chris: The idea behind the spending is that it creates more jobs. Are you arguing that another check to individuals would be more useful?