Economic stimulus wasted on the old

My brother, who's just finishing grad school, is visiting Chicago for a conference. He's as broke as most college students, but one of his first stops yesterday was to the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue to buy an iPod Touch for around $220.

"That student loan money comes in handy," I said to him on the bus this morning. He just smiled.

As he tucked the gadget back into his jacket pocket, it dawned on me that if Congress and the President want to jump-start consumer spending, infrastructure spending is a great piece of the pie. But the other huge slices of cash should be directed at the nation's youngest consumers.

Sure, Pell grants will get a boost, but most of the targeted tax breaks in the stimulus plan will go to people with enough years in the workforce to be buying big-ticket items like homes and cars.

College students are experts at wasting money. The real world of paying off debt, securing a mortgage—that's all off in the hazy future. Give me a big tax break or a stimulus check and I might just save some of it. Give my little bro a big check and he'll stimulate the hell out of the economy.

If we want to try to prop up consumer activity while we wait for the jobs created by other parts of the stimulus package to kick in, let's go to every campus and mall in America and start handing out wads of cash. Meanwhile, the rest of us should get ready to buy shares of Apple, Miller and Anheuser-Busch. Cut in the grade-schoolers and pre-schoolers, too—they are finely tuned begging machines, with persuasive capabilities that President Obama can only dream of possessing. Then add Toys R Us and Chuck E. Cheese to your portfolio.

Kick in a few billion for the people in their 20s and 30s who go out to restaurants & bars or concerts most often and you'd really see some positive economic impact. Targeting cash for short-term stimulus mostly at older folks might be politically smart, but it ain't gonna put diners and drinkers in the seats or tech-hungry customers into the Apple Store.