value, quality or cheap?

So, I've been thinking lately as I listen to everybody and their brother on every news channel talking about the economy, unemployment and how to fix stuff. "The Stimulas Plan didn't work"...."it did work"...."it's too soon to tell if it's working"..."we've only spent 10% of the money so how do we know if it's gonna work or not?".... Everybody's all over the place. Here's what I know. Unemployment is still flirting with the 10%+ area with true unemployment almost twice that number. The House keeps talking about how they can spend our money to stimulate the economy and get America back to work. I'm just thinking about this from a parochial point of view here but it seems to me that instead of spending another $800+Billion on an assortment of investments and programs the politicians think might help get things moving in the right direction... how about if they just created a wide range of programs and actually didn't spend any money. Instead they let small businesses sort through these support programs and we let them decide which ones they like and which will get them to take positive action..hiring...making stuff...buying stuff...etc... If we can get our country to once again decide that quality is what counts and NOT cheap prices and we get manufacturing focused on building and making stuff that is the BEST in the world instead of competing to be the cheapest....and as consumers we decided we were going to choose quality and value over cheap...wouldn't things kind of take care of themselves again? I mean, if we need consumer confidence to get people to spend money...and we started thinking with the values systems our forefathers gave us...and the small businesses in our community could choose the programs to invest in and they could decide where the government should spend our money instead of letting the politicians (most of whom never had to meet a payroll in their lives), wouldn't our economy and traditional values be more likely to put us back on track? I don't know...I just like the thought of our local business people and we each as consumers individually get to be in charge again...I just have a lot more confidence in us than I have in them. And, I've always believed in value and quality over cheap...don't you?