Flutterby™! : Stimulus musings

My response to the "Stimulus Package" has mostly been feeling like... well... like our various elected representatives have been "bend over and we'll give you a stimulus package".

Mark's most recent entry, on the boondoggle that's passing for economics these days, made something clear:

If one were serious about "jump starting the economy", one would be looking toward steps that make people willing to spend money and participate in commerce again. Here's what I think a reasonable stimulus package would look like:

1. Reinforce support for Social Security. Yeah, you can whine all you want about how people should be saving for their own retirement, but if you're the sort of person who has a right to be doing such whining it's such a small portion of your income it really doesn't matter, and if you must complain about it you can just treat it as some of the more the conservative bits of your savings.
2. Make a strong commitment towards reducing government spending and government deficits. I think at this point we're all well aware that we're liable for the government debt, and we feel the additional deficit spending as debt. You want us to spend, right? If you're spending money for me, my discretionary income goes down.
3. Reign in the money supply. Convince me that my future is bright, that my assets are worth something. That I don't need to take every free penny I've got and stuff it into commodities that are going to be relatively inflation stable, rather than keeping that money flowing.

Instead, it sure seems to me like the current set of stimulus packages are designed to make me worry about my future, run up debts I don't have any hope of covering, and showing that the only way out of this disaster is monstrous inflation in a few years. I'm taking personal steps to cover myself for this, but it ain't things that are generally as good for the economy as if I weren't hunkering down and expecting the storm.