Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[Jester]

More than 1/6 is going to offset state costs, like the money under taxation which is going to refurbish schools. That would otherwise be a state, or local tax payer cost. The simple bubble breakdown doesn't show how the money will be used.

Obviously stimulus will be spent in states, on things that states might otherwise, in an alternate reality, spend money on. Restricting the stimulus entirely to federal jurisdiction would be stupid - you'd miss the vast majority of projects that might actually help, at the state or local level. Whether or not that enormous list breaks down as you claim it does is beyond my patience to figure out - I strongly suspect it doesn't, but I can't be bothered to add up all the stray millions.

However, those are quite specifically stimulus projects, things that states would not have done, or would have deferred. They are discretionary expenses. One does not need to be "bailed out" from something you have discretion to spend money on. I don't mean to split hairs, but the money spent keeping states solvent is money spent on their obligatory expenses, not their optional ones. No state is (with their own money) embarking on new infrastructure while they can't pay their employees, or cover their debt service. Indeed, this is the whole point of stimulus - to counteract contraction. Without that money, states are paralyzed, and that means a lot of potential jobs that simply never exist.

Poverty is a primary results of un- and under-employment. Focusing on how to get most people, who are able, employed at a rate above the poverty level will resolve the problem of poverty. We live in a global market. There is no reason why we can't get close to full employment in the US, if we would allow it.

I'm still not hearing very much "how" in there. If you have a simple solution (how to "allow" unemployment and poverty to vanish, as if it were so simple), you have several Nobel prizes headed your way, not to mention honorary doctorates at every Econ department in the world. But, of course, I don't think you have one.

Or, put another way, unemployment is currently 5% over full employment, with another few % discouraged from entering the job market. That's millions of job seekers with no jobs. Can you really solve this problem?

-Jester