Arguing for a new stimulus package

The economy is recovering. I keep hearing how the recession is over, how the world will settle down and we can all go back to being mindless automatons who consume and produce endlessly. Unfortunately, our current employment issues are not going anywhere, and the country as a whole is without a direction. While I won't call it a failure (as it is currently creating a whole mess of jobs) the president's first stimulus package has failed to provide us with the road to true recovery. Because of this, I believe it is time to go back to the drawing table and come up with a new stimulus package, one that truely offers transformative steps for our economy.

Now, the first stimulus package did provide a number of incentives and projects to help with our infrastructure, but what I'm talking about is something on a scale we've never seen before. We need to have a team of economists, climate scientists, engineers, etc. sit down and come up with a roadmap to turn the United States into the world's primary manufacturer of renewable energy infrastructure.

Developing a new stimulus package might not be politically wise, according to the prevailing wisdom in the mainstream media, but we need a number of things right now that could easily be incorporated into a bill that would be a boon to American employment, American exports, and America's energy infrastructure. The first step would be to invest more, enough to cover the entire nation, in a national low loss energy grid. This alone would boost jobs and have long term benefits, because our existing energy infrastructure is decaying. The first stimulus package contained funding for a lot of this infrastructure, but frankly I think we should fund a complete national grid. Not only would this add jobs, but the energy savings would pay the cost off in the long run.

Another good idea would be creating a large fund for financing the purchase of existing manufacturing space and turning it into a factory to produce renewable energy infrastructure. Imagine the thousands of unused spaces around the country being remodeled and developed into production facilities for windmill parts, solar panels, solar thermal systems, and geothermal energy production. We could also provide tax credits to have every vehicle in America converted to be a flex fuel vehicle, allowing anyone to run their vehicle on ethanol, which, while an imperfect replacement fuel, shouldn't be abandoned simply because corn ethanol has become a debacle. All of these steps would make jobs and would have a remarkably positive effect on the longterm prosperity of the country. All of these investments would pay off beyond their initial cost, and most importantly it would demonstrate that the government is still willing to make the right call rather than the popular one on economic issues.

Best of all, if we were to have a truely environmentally/sustainably focused stimulus package, one that jump started these industries, we would be showing the world that the USA is willing to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to intervening to stop global climate change. The only downside is added debt, something which I am certain would be justifiable if you consider the value added by these investments. Each factory would be contributing economic activyt and the energy saved from the energy grid would be spent elsewhere. We have to make these investments some time, it may as well be now.