{"id":304,"date":"2009-03-05T10:58:07","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T10:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/now-heres-a-real-stimulus-pack.html"},"modified":"2009-03-05T10:58:07","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T10:58:07","slug":"now-heres-a-real-stimulus-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/now-heres-a-real-stimulus-pack.html","title":{"rendered":"Now here’s a real stimulus package…"},"content":{"rendered":"

David P. Goldman says we need to procreate ourselves back to prosperity<\/a>. At First Things<\/em>, Goldman chides Republicans for all the failed and weak-kneed responses to the outrage that is (in his view) the Obama economic program. The cause of the crisis was not fiscal recklessness, but the demographic dip. Hence:<\/p>\n

\n

The first thing that conservatives have to tell Americans is: “You are poorer because you failed to bring up enough children. The decline of the traditional family is undermining the American economy.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A few grafs on he continues:<\/p>\n

\n

Conservatives have to cast the blame for the crisis at the culture of death. It isn’t only home prices, of course. If the labor force shrinks because the next generation simply fails to appear, who will pay taxes to support pensions and medical care for the elderly? Unlike Japan or most of Europe, America still has a fertility rate close to replacement. It isn’t past the point of demographic no return.<\/p>\n

There are a few things that economic policy can do right away to make things better. Big tax cuts (in the form of a per-child exemption) that help families with children will do more to revive the economy than infrastructure boondoggles. Young families spend; empty-nesters save. That’s elementary. If you want to get more spending, put more money into the hands of the demographic cohort that has the greatest propensity to spend.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hey, sex AND spending. It’s an irresistible bailout, er, rescue. Certainly the demographic hurdle of all us old folks weighing on too few kids is a serious challenge. Then again, maybe lower housing prices resulting from this downturn might actually result in housing that parents like me could even dream of affording, resulting in somewhat greater security when we are decrepit, and less of a burden (I pray) on our progeny. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David P. Goldman says we need to procreate ourselves back to prosperity. At First Things, Goldman chides Republicans for all the failed and weak-kneed responses to the outrage that is (in his view) the Obama economic program. The cause of the crisis was not fiscal recklessness, but the demographic dip. Hence: The first thing that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nNow here's a real stimulus package... - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/now-heres-a-real-stimulus-pack.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Now here's a real stimulus package... - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David P. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}