Last week the president and Congress agreed on an “economic stimulus package” to be signed into law. Costing $150 billion, the bill will be used to give tax rebates of $600 to individuals, as well as $1,200 for couples plus an extra $300 per child. Much of the bill gives tax breaks for small businesses and incentives for citizens to invest in business.

The bill was in response to the apparent slowdown in some parts of the economy, what with the languid housing industry and tight credit market resulting from the subprime-mortgage issue. Fears of a recession are enveloping the public. The powers that be tell us that this bill will jumpstart our economy and help avoid a recession. But will it? Or is this just another flawed government initiative?

While nobody hates to receive a check in the mail, how condescending is it that our government has so precisely lived up to it’s “nanny state” label that it’s now even giving us an allowance?

And anyways, isn’t it the creed of Democrats and big government Republicans that the American people aren’t smart enough to spend their own money in responsible ways? Isn’t the whole idea of welfarism and Social Security that the government knows better than us how to handle the bulk of our incomes? Are they reneging? Doubtful.

They say it will create jobs, but if government planning and temporary rebates is what creates jobs, why not do this once a year? Once a month? Our economy could be booming if only our bureaucratic saviors in government would butt in and create them for us, right? Wrong. As Henry David Thoreau once said, “This government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way.”

Additionally, nobody is asking where this $150 billion dollar tip from the tooth fairy will come from. With the massive deficit that our president has thrust upon us, we don’t have this kind of money on hand. To just dole out cash the government either has to raise taxes, which are known to hamper the economy and is thus counter-productive, borrow the money even though we’re already in heaps of debt, or have the Federal Reserve print more bills, which causes inflation – making all of us poorer. What a genius bunch of knuckleheads we have in Washington, planning our lives.

These sorts of economically illiterate temporary fixes won’t work in the long run. And besides, if rebates are good, why not make them permanent? If more cash in the hands of the people, as opposed to the government, is what stimulates our economy and makes us more prosperous, why not cut taxes (significantly) for good? Apparently it’s because the American people would rather continue feeding our monster government.

The truth is that these sorts of flawed beliefs about economics, the government and the relationship between the two are much more pervasive than just this one stimulus package would have you believe. Economist Bryan Caplan calls this “Anti-Market Bias” – a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of the market mechanism. In his book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies,” Caplan says, “The public has severe doubts about how much it can count on profit-seeking business to produce socially beneficial outcomes”, but that economists disagree.

Politicians pander to this misinformed public sentiment. Barack Obama condemns profit in his speeches, decrying Exxon’s $11 billion income last year. What he’s too ignorant to realize is that oil is becoming increasingly inaccessible and demand has shot way up. All this costs money for oil companies; each barrel costs more to produce and more to process as a product. What does he think; oil tycoons wake up greedy and set their own artificially high prices? If that’s so, what happens when prices decrease? Were they less greedy that day? The notion that anything but the laws of supply and demand control prices is asinine.

Hillary Clinton has promised to cap interest rates of credit card companies: “I’ve proposed real consumer protections against abusive interest rates – capping them at no more than 30 percent and working to get them far lower,” she said at a speech in Ohio earlier this month.

But as Caplan reminds us, “a government that successfully stamped out interest payments would be no friend to those in need of credit, for the stamp would crush lending as well.” Not to mention what a socialist idea it is for the government to be controlling business; setting prices and capping rates.

The unwillingness of the public to understand simple economics is leading us down a long and undesirable road. Freedom from excessive government control of our economy has become a deplorable notion to most people. Capitalism has become a dirty word, while crippling government regulation has become a noble endeavor. The truth is that the liberty to freely trade, conduct business, and participate in an economy not stifled by giant government is exactly what we need to stimulate our economy. The truth is that freedom is our savior, not government.

The only stimulating that this bill will do is to stimulate the questions from politicians and voters alike over whether the government has the right or the ability to plan our economy into better days.

John Glaser is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]