Believe it or not

Would you believe that in the former Soviet Union there was a market for burned out lightbulbs. You haven't done that have you, replaced a good bulb at work with a bad for the home?

And, would you believe that I'd thought of this independently at about the same time? No doubt that many folks were thinking along similar lines.

This is part of an email I sent a few hours ago to my senators about the U.S. stimulus bill:

The more the bill is burdened with future spending the more taxpayers/consumers will cut back their spending today because they know they will be the ones who have to pay the bill eventually. The downturn we are suffering is in large measure due to a loss of consumer confidence -- we don't want to make that worse.

I had in mind that Ricardian Equivalence thinking kicks in in times like these. Unless, as Robin Hanson is recommending, the government lies about how much it is spending.