Economics?

I've been hearing all about these banks and big institutions that are getting all this money to keep them from failing and I'm a little resentful. I have an economic plan that might help all the banks.

I think Obama used the phrase, "trickle up," in his big speech and I know I could use a little trickle of some kind. See, if you give the banks the money to keep them from going under they will try to protect it and by protecting it I mean keeping it out of the hands of people like me who would frivolously spend it on things like power company bills and mortgage payments.

Now, I'm not going to advocate just giving this money away. Not to me or anybody else, because if you just give money to people then they aren't considerate of its value. How many people used those economic stimulus packages on new TVs? (Not me.) I think there ought to be some kind of government equivalent of those phony work at home programs. Only, you know, with real work and real pay.

A lot of us could transcribe important forms that aren't available online into text files. We could network to help improve neighborhood watch programs. I don't rightly understand what the New Deal was about but I know my grandfather fed his five kids doing stuff for the government. We can pour cement for dams or go to Texas and help out for a few weeks. I bet a lot of the homeowners who are having trouble making house payments would be happy to do some kind of government service in their spare time (after their regular jobs) to earn a little extra to help make those payments.

I'm not talking about stuff that already gets done by government workers, I'm talking about the extra infrastructure that's needed but isn't available. Maybe picking up garbage on city streets or making sure the stop signs haven't been stolen by the local hooligans. Give us that work and pay us for it, only about what the work is worth, and then we can make our payments and the banks won't need bailouts.

Productivity is good. Infrastructure helps business, right? Paid bills are better for everybody. I'm probably missing something but it sounds good from here.