Anandakos

Would Defeat of Obama's Stimulus Plan Be a Good Thing?

I fear you are correct. When FDR embarked on his counter-cyclical efforts the Treasury was in surplus and there was essentially no debt. Part of the process was a deliberate 30% devaluation in the dollar, in an attempt to reduce the burden of existing debt. But other than running a deficit of about 6% of GDP for three years, all the calamity Republicans scream about was pretty weak beer.

Things are different today. We begin the process of recovery with an accumulated Federal debt of about 65% of GDP and of course a huge tsunami of partially funded (NOT "unfunded"...) liabilities from Medicare and Social Security. We need to worry about the dollar.

I believe that one way we could pay for some of the needed counter-cyclical spending is to place a significant Federal real property tax on estates valued at greater than $5 million for three to five years. Maybe 10% of the assessed valuation per year. We need some way to recapture some of the ill-gotten gains of the looney hedge funders who got us into this mess, and nicking their real property would help.