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Even if it were to happen it would be like taking money from Sam to pay Paul to give to Peter to pay Sam back.

It would be an exact repeat of Cash for Clunkers and the Homebuyers Credit: produce a short-lived bump followed by a big crash that produces results in the near-term but lots more pain in the mid-long term. Analysis (more accurately: stating the obvious): this is an attempt to use Federal tax policy to buy the Nov elections.

The only things that'll really work are structural, and permanent, tax and spending cuts.

The problem isn't that companies and people aren't spending. That's just the symptom. The problem is that, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire and the overall statist behavior of this Administration, companies and people have NO CONFIDENCE in long-term economic prospects.

“The problem is ... the overall statist behavior of this Administration, companies and people have NO CONFIDENCE in long-term economic prospects.”

Ya think? Ya think maybe everyone has lost confidence because Trojan Marxists are in charge of the economy? Ya think maybe the natural reaction to redistributionists trying to claw wealth away from earners to “redistribute” it to non-earners would be for the earners to hunker down and try to prevent their wealth from being “redistributed”? You know, hunker down, as in not loaning money, not borrowing money, not spending money, not taking risks, not hiring, and withdrawing and hiding money from the financial system. You know, like simply performing no financial transactions at all, since not transacting is the simplest way to keep your wealth from being subject to taxation and redistribution.

It’s simple, actually. Wealth is extracted by the wealth-takers from the wealth-creators when money flows from one place to another, that is, when a financial transaction occurs. The takers have inserted various money-snatching filters in those flows, but when the money-snatching begins to siphon so much of the money that the flows result in a net loss of wealth instead of a net gain in wealth, then those who initiate the flows simply shut them down.

You can visualize a financial transaction as water flowing in a pipe and taxation as a tap the government installs to steal some of the water. The wealth creators open the spigot and some of their wealth flows down the pipe, say to sprinkle on a field in order to grow some new factories that employ people and produce goods they can buy with their wages. Now, say, a 1000 gallons goes in one end, the government steals 100 gallons from its tap and gives away gallon jugs to buy votes with or whatever, and 900 gallons end up helping the new factories grow. Things still keep on working. The factories grow, people are employed, goods are manufactured, and wealth increases for everyone involved.

Now, suppose the government steals, say 400 gallons to “redistribute”, and only 600 gallons get through to grow the new factories. Well, the factories fail to grow, and the wealth creators say, “This isn’t working, the heck with this”, and they close the spigot. Now there’s no new factories and the government gets nothing either. You know, pretty much like the economy we see today under the helm of the Obammunist redistributionists.

Basically, this is simply a modern version of Aesop’s fable, “The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs”, and the Trojan Marxists in charge of the economy right now are busily eviscerating the goose to reach those last hard to reach golden eggs in order to slice them up and “redistribute” them. It’s no wonder the golden egg supply has dried up, now is it?