Stimuli

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says Bush and the Republicans have it exactly backward.

We should begin by strengthening the unemployment insurance system, because money received by the unemployed would be spent immediately.

[...]

The Bush administration has long taken the view that tax cuts (especially permanent tax cuts for the rich) are the solution to every problem. This is wrong. Tax cuts in general perpetuate the excessive consumption that has marked the American economy. But middle- and lower-income Americans have been suffering for the last seven years — median family income is lower today than it was in 2000. A tax rebate aimed at lower- and middle-income households makes sense, especially since it would be fast-acting.

If you think about it even for a second, this is just common sense. The trickle-down effectiveness of upper-bracket tax cuts has never been based on anything but hope and wishes in the first place. George H.W. Bush didn't call it "voodoo economics" for nothing.

Yet we have Republican presidential candidates who insist that strengthening the economy is no more complicated than handing out more tax cuts to the rich, and making them permanent.

Let's hope reason prevails over ideology.