How will Obama's recovery plan help the economy?

His plan will work the same way that FDR's plan caused the Depression to linger on past WWII. With such massive government spending they have to raise taxes and they need to borrow hugh amounts of money to pay for the projects. This will take money away from consumers and business so they will not be able to expand and produce consumer products. If you study what happened during the building of the WPA projects you will see that many of the jobs paid higher wages and caused many problems in small communities. According to government contracts the government projects the contractors have to pay the prevailing Union wage. This is often higher than the local wage of the local merchants have to pay higher wages or close up the store. If on the other hand President Obama were to reduce taxes so people had more money to spend and save. By saving people would make money available for loans to other people. The other tax that should be reduced is the Capital Gains tax. By reducing this tax it would encourage people to invest in new companies and provide investmsnt capital for existing companies. This is what the economy needs nor more government spending.

The key is to get people employed, as many as possible. This in turn will allow them to buy goods and services, which in turn will help other industries. Furthermore, our roads are in disrepair, bridges need fixing. Have you taken a longer trip on our nations interstates lately? Have a closer look the next time you do. You might notice how much fixing all that needs. A smooth road makes for faster driving and easier transport of goods, too. Major potholes and stuff like that also wear down trucks faster and cause damage. New roads would might ease congestion and result in a shorter distance to travel from point a to point b. Other transportation systems need an overhaul, too, such as railway, local public transportation, airports, shipping ports. But the projects covered by this don't stop with just directly transportation related stuff. I have seen wish lists of communities containing public building renovations and much more. Although I don't see how a skate park could be covered by that. It worked for Eisenhower probably better than it will work now, because it allowed companies to expand their business to new areas which aided in a faster economic expansion. That won't be as much the case this time around. It will still help to provide people with jobs, money to spend, skills to learn, new employment avenues to explore. Not just those directly working on the shovel-ready projects but also in the supplier businesses etc. It'll trickle down. Overall not a bad idea and definitely better than just handing over the money to the banks or car manufacturers.

They are planning more than just building roads and bridges. They are planning to give the country all new infrastructure. It will mean more people employed in good jobs and paying taxes. It certainly will benefit American companies making construction equipment and supplies. This would probably be a good time for investing in American companies like Caterpillar. Is it necessary? Where I live it is. We've had a number of near misses over the last several years. One of the county seat towns had a gas main blow because it was corroded. It took out two homes. Fortunately nobody was home in either of them. But those people returned to find they owned nothing larger than a matchstick. In another incident, a water main blew at an upscale little shopping center. It formed a powerful geyser than lifted a heavy manhole cover and hurled in down the sidewalk. Fortunately that time it was when the center was closed and there were no injuries. That's twice we've dodged a bullet in these parts. You cannot hear of these things happening and not know that a time is coming when there will be a catastrophe. We are currently having three or four blackouts a year. They are short but recurring. In fact there was one yesterday in part of the town where I live. Nobody can quite seem to remember when the infrastructure was updated but it probably was at least as far back as the 1940's. Fortunately for us in Southeastern Pennsylvania, the work has already begun. The county where I live replaced all the water mains over the last couple months and they have just this week started on the gas mains. I'm not certain why we are starting so early but our governor is Ed Rendell and he has been sounding the alarm about the infrastructure for quite some time. I can tell you that getting these things taken care of is bringing a lot of peace of mind here.

The short answer, it won't. The only thing it is going to help is to devalue the dollar more, grow the size of government and the debt. This is wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. If this is the type of "change" we can expect, then we're all skrewed.

During the depression, programs were created to put people to work, but they were government operated programs. Obama has indicated that his plan would do this through the private sector, which would undoubtedly mean that money would go to private companies to hire people to work on the roads - something I feel is just asking for abuse of funding. There are only so many schools, parks, roads and bridges and this employment would obviously be of a temporary nature. Obama also talks about the computerization of medical records as one of the ways that he wants to spend money to stimulate the economy. Most major hospitals already have computerized medical records. I believe, however, that Obama's plan is one which includes a national data base for records - where everyone's medical records would be dumped into one big pot and would be available to all medical personnel who might treat the patient. Just who would have access to this data base and what security measures would be implemented to prevent access by unauthorized persons? I highly doubt that $1,000 tax break per working couple would make much of a dent in the economy - probably even less than the stimulus checks that were issued last year. I firmly believe that putting more $$ in the hands of the average American would do far more good than dumping billions into companies that can't guarantee that the money they have received will keep them in business beyond the next couple of months.

This is the same type of plan that got us out of the great depression, so it has a history of working. When you give Americans jobs, they spend money, when they spend money retail companies hire more people, so the unemployment numbers go down and consumer confidence goes up because people have jobs. When people are losing their jobs, they don't spend money even if they have a job, because they are afraid of losing theirs. I listen to a finacial news channel all day long, and they are about 99% republicans, and feel that we need tax cuts. But, this is the same logic that we have used for the last 8 years, and we all see where that got us. Giving tax cuts to people that make the most has never worked, that is just a fact. Why should we continue to bang our heads against the wall, eventually we will just kill ourselfs.

Well don't know how it helped the economy, but eisenhowers plan was the interstate because he was dealing with a 20% unemployment rate at that time. It seems that all presidents get in there and find more ways to make jobs, but tax us. I mean we have been paying for eisenhowers plan every since and don't think your not going to pay for Obama's. I am sure that it will be a quick fix for while he is in office. He doesnt care what happens either other way just while he is in there. Isn't that what they all do?