The first trade off the author describes is the equity-efficiency trade-off. The first idea is to spend close to one trillion dollars to create more jobs and relying on the people who receive those new jobs, to then go and spend their money in other paces. The major debate with this trade-off is that many experts question whether some will be able to make it through the tough economic times that we are now experiencing. Many believe that this type of stimulus plan will not work because equity has been tied up and made harder to get in the past sixteen years. However, some believe that we cannot afford equity at the moment and believe that we need to stabilize the economy before we try to create at rise n the economy.
The second trade-off the author talks about is the debate of whether we have the right proportion of big infrastructure projects to other parts of the economic stimulus plan. This debate is whether their is an equal balance of money spent to create jobs, but to spend money in other places to stimulate the economy. Many believe that simply putting money into major infrastructure projects will not be enough to stimulate the economy and there are other things that may help with the economy that are not defined as an infrastructure project. The main debate over this idea is that many politicians are adding projects for self interests and will not create jobs.
I personally believe that the "Wall Street Bailout" should give all of us an example of how to create a new stimulus plan. The "Wall Street Bailout" so far has been a total disaster. Bankers are getting richer and people are getting poorer. The "Wall Street Bailout" was rushed through Congress, not allowing enough time and effort to go into the critical thinking of how to create a solution to the problem. As a result the first $350 billion is gone and nothing has changed, except that bankers are now receiving exorbitant bonuses thanks to tax-payers money. We all need to realize that it took years for the country to get into the economic crisis that we are in now and it will not simply be fixed with just one economic plan and will take possibly several years for the country to escape the economic hole that we are in. There needs to be more thought and effort made to make sure the stimulus package actually stimulates the economy, instead of throwing away a trillion dollars. The country as a whole needs to stop being so greedy to hopefully allow us to get out of this mess. We can not put the blame on a select few, though it makes us all feel better to blame someone, we are all at fault.
