Is the Stimulus Package the right remedy?

If I would dare to make an analogy between the social body or the state and a living thing, say the human body, I would tend to compare the financial system or Wall Street with the stomach, and to the other organs I would assimilate what is called Main Street by politicians and journalists alike – assuming these are separate entities.

To make that statement, I found inspiration in an allegory with the human body written by Aesop -- The Belly and the Members -- twenty-seven centuries ago, and used by Cato the Elder five centuries later as a way of breaking a refusal to work by the Roman plebe, under the pretense that their hard labor only benefits the noble class. Cato presented the plebe with the following argument:

One day, different parts of the body, juging unjust that they should all work for the sole benefit of the stomach, decided to go on strike. The legs and feet refrain from walking to fetch the food and water; the hands swear not to prepare food or bring it to the mouth, and the mouth not to receive it; the nose refuses to smell so that it no longer distinguish between good and bad food; the teeth show solidarity by not grinding, the tongue and throat by not swallowing, and so on.

On the first day of strike, one could feel the painful contractions of the stomach, the selfish and arrogant parasite just exposed by its comrades; this caused an euphoric contentment among the strikers, satisfied that their strategy won the greatest victory since creation. The second day, the pride of having stood up to downright injustice by the so-called higher organs is immeasurable; especially jubilant was the hand, touching the most food possible, to twist the knife in the wound.

By the third day, however, a certain gloom takes hold of the whole body, whose parts unexpectedly are starting to feel discomfort. With the brain experiencing generalized weakness, the body can barely leave the bed, the hands hardly move, the feet stagger rather than walk, the tongue gets numb, the vision declines dramatically, even the hearing that begins to lose its sharpness. The fourth day, the main functions of the body dangerously blurred. Faced with the looming disaster for the fifth day, should the work stoppage continue, the euphoria gives way to panic.

The strikers held a council. Their increased paralysis reflects the fact they receive no more blood from the heart, which leads to the conclusion that, far from being a privileged organ, the stomach performs an essential function that is to transform food into energy, to promote blood circulation in the body for the benefit of the whole organism.

Wall Street is not to the social body what the stomach is to the human body. In the latter, the various organs, including the stomach, are ordained to the smooth functioning of the whole body through the brain, to which they are all linked by a necessary relationship. By contrast, in the state or the social body, Wall Street is only an appendice seeking the most avantages possible with no regards to the common good.

In conclusion, if the energy (the stimulus package) provided to the social body through the stomach (Wall Street) is not returned to the body parts (Main Street), why is it the fault of government? Because, the government should know better : as a democracy, it has no authority to give orders to all, but can only hope for the cooperation of most.