Thoughts On Federal Government Stimulus

President Obama is promising a new stimulus program soon. In the long run I do not believe this will work. But, it might provide some short term relief. The trick will be to structure it in such a way to give us the maximum number of private sector jobs. I can think of a program that might please the environmental activists and give us those jobs. If such a stimulus program is created, it should have the federal government paying to have energy efficiency improvements installed in buildings. They could set a limit based on the square footage of the building. Now, this wouldn’t be just insulation and such. It would pay to have things like solar water heaters and solar panels added to houses (there are some interesting and easy to install products on the near-term horizon). I realize that solar electric panels are not efficient. But the manufacture and installation of these items would provide jobs. One of the keys would be no money would come out of the property owner’s wallet. The contractors doing this work would send the bills to the Federal Government with the government doing spot checks to make sure the work was done (and hefty fines if it was not actually done). IMO, this would be a better stimulus than any “shovel ready” public works projects receiving federal money.