Is the US headed towards a socialist government?

[kandrathe]

But, if you're taking about how to use government money to stimulate the economy, if you give a tax break to a widget producer to hire someone, and then nobody wants widgets, that's money that's been thrown away exactly as surely as if the government hired a hole-digger-filler-inner. "The market" is not a flawless allocator of resources when they're being given a giant external shock like a pure cash injection *not distributed according to market critieria*. You're just as likely, maybe more likely, to get a boondoggle there as in infrastructure spending.

No, not quite. The employer still has to risk far more in hiring the person, and thereby making that hire profitable. The criticism may be valid that you will get what people want, rather than what the government thinks people need. When government gets involved at the federal level we end up with "Bridges to Nowhere". Just because someone thinks its a good idea, does not mean it really is a good idea or will stimulate the economy. So, for example, is corn based ethanol *really* a good idea? I say no, and I question why the government is subsidizing a failed concept.

This is the package, at least from the quick google search. Now, you can yak all you want in the abstract about how government spends money inefficiently, but these are the places this money is going, and it all looks pretty sensible to me.

Wow, this is filled with nuggets of truthiness, like "Since 2001, as worker productivity went up, 96% of the income growth in this country went to the wealthiest 10% of society. While they were benefiting from record high worker productivity, the remaining 90% of Americans were struggling to sustain their standard of living. They sustained it by borrowing… and borrowing… and borrowing, and when they couldn’t borrow anymore, the bottom fell out. This plan will strengthen the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs and special interests in Washington." -- Dave Obey(D-WI), Chairman House Committee on Appropriations. That's right, it was middle class borrowing that destroyed our economy. Not a housing bubble created by vapid oversight of Fannie and Freddie, or the practice of repackaging of mortgages as junk bonds, or a rapidly devaluing US currency, or a loss of jobs to off shore manufacturing... Maybe we could find a more objective, or reasonable (rather than insane) source?

How about this one by the Washington Post? Or, this one by USA Today. At least they cite their sources and don't tell bald faced lies (that I can see). Now, I don't have the same analysis of the compromise bill, and no one really knows what is in that 11,000 page bill yet. I think Congress is now getting around to reading what came out of the closed door democrat only committee. Even so, the democrats pushed it through the House without even their own party being allowed to fully read or comprehend the bill. So, when you read on the liberal rags this weekend on how the evil Republicans stood in the path of the Obama train, know that no one in Congress even read the compromise bill before they voted for it. It's nice to know that my representatives are still ready with that brainless passion filled rubber stamp. You know, the same one that got us into that war in Iraq.