I already spend for basic things I need because I need them and no consumer spending at all but while avoiding unpaid credit card debt is also a good way to help the economy.

A little spending on everyone’s part helps keep some people employed and helps to better ensure that some of the things and people you need are still there when you need them.

I will buy a new car one day, but am saving (for about 2 years) a bit each month toward it to avoid being debt financing it each month paying out interest. I plan to buy this car outright with a trade in, some haggling and owe nothing more.

As for scarves and other items I need, I knit them each night (while I watch TV) from yarn I have in the house.

But back to the current situation that Obama and Congress is looking at, the remedy may or may not produce results and Obama owned up to that, but like he said, we don’t have the luxury to go to inaction and paralysis. To do nothing, will mean the end of our country. But at the same time, experience, much thought and getting the people of this land to work together must go into this.

We can’t afford to have our towns and cities shut down and leave our people hungry, desperate, unable to pay bills, no employment, no banks, no grocery stores, untimately no police, fire and ambulance, etc.
With no jobs, people can’t pay their bills, thus companies, stores and banks go under.

Segment the US population by income. You find a disproportionate number of gay people/couples toward the higher end. Better-yet, much of this income is disposable (no kids, nannies, playpens, private school).

Figure: 330M population, 6% gay = 19.8M gay people…if 5% are coupled and ready for marriage…that’s 1 million marriages waiting to happen.

At $15 – $20k per marriage (including travel, music, flowers, cakes, cards, hair, clothes, honeymoons, etc.) thats $20,000 x 1 million potential marriages.

That’s $20 billion of stimulus, spread across the country, and across many different sectors…and it costs the taxpayer nothing.

The irony, for me, is not that the Dems want a larger percentage going to stimulous spending, or that the Repubs want the larger percentage going to tax cuts for the rich and/or ‘Big’ business. For those of us that live in the ‘real’ world, and that IS most of us, it’s the attempt by Repubs to ignore the FACTS of the last eight years of failed policies that got us where we are economically, and that includes their deficit spending that FAR surpassed any ability to NOW create an image of fiscal conservatives worried about spending.

Where was this ‘concern’ over deficit spending when they bailed out the Banks with little to no oversight or accountability? … where was the outrage over Executive salaries and bonuses paid with taxpayer dollars, despite losing trillions based on a job performance of absolute failure to perform?… where was the concern of fiscal conservatives that demanded these giveaways to happen ‘immediately or else’?

Why, when we are looking at 500 thousand, plus, jobs being lost every month, month after month after month, for how many month’s now, are they suddenly outraged over the current ‘Democratic’ stimulous package aimed at helping ‘we the people’?… and why is it suddenly reckless and wasteful spending when we are talking about Unemployment Insurance, and why are they babbling on and on about cutting ‘Entitlement’ spending?… but Corporate Entitlement programs are a-ok, but not for the taxpayers ? … and heavens to Betsy, don’t even talk about the wasteful infastructure spending, or God for bid, require these new infastructure jobs be built with American workers, using American products… like steel, etc. ??? How GASTLY Un-American… that’s like all ‘protectionist’ and stuff !

Sorry, but I don’t feel that ‘we the people’ need to apologize for having to do some unpopular things that Republicans don’t like, and since we elected Obama and the Dems specifically for change AWAY from the Neocon agenda that got us where we are today, not ONE of us needs to control our demands for that change to happen whether the Neocons like it or not.

The employee, the consumer, and the taxpayer are ALL one and the same person. Economics 101 taught all of us that if the employee is gone, you don’t have a consumer or a taxpayer, and without consumer demand, your supply side economics is worth a BIG ZERO… even when you ship it in from China utilizing slave and slave child labor, the piper will eventually have to be paid. There is no ‘free’ in anything, including Free Trade.

My son hasn’t worked in MONTHS. HE doesn’t need a fraakin’ TAX CUT; he needs a JOB.

NOT ONE MORE PENNY FOR CORPORATE WELFARE! Let THEM ride the bus and eat day-old bread, for a change.

MOST of the “captains of industry” in this country OUGHT to be in JAIL for FRAUD and ROBBERY!

But clearly we have to do *something*. Over a half million jobs disappeared in the last two months, thanks to the previous administration’s lax attitude towards the people in control of our finances. So unless someone has something else to put on the table, I’d say we have little choice but to run with this one.