Pascal's wager and the stimulus plan

The problem with Pascal's wager is the same one with the economic package... its not just a question of "god vs no god", there is also the risk of backing the wrong god. (you know how jealous gods can be, and you'd probably be better off not believing than incurring the wrath of god by getting it dead wrong.)

"The loss if it doesn't work is, well, $800 billion...and a complete collapse of the dollar. But that risk is already there..."
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To clarify your thinking on that some more, you should also ask how much the obligation to repay the $800+ billion to be spent on political priorities (see http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/02/10/what-the-stimulus-is-all-about/) increases the risk of the dollar's collapse.
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It's not sufficient to note that this risk exists regardless of the slush fund's passage; the question is whether its passage exacerbates the risk unacceptably.

pluk,
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The problem with your comparison is that the wager is about "a God." The term a is most commonly used to denote singular or stand-alone entity. The proper corollary is a complete and totally separate choice.
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In this case, tax-cuts might equal no God while spending might equal God. If one is revitalizing and the other is not, then we have the wager.
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Frankly, I would rather see all tax-cuts or all spending or nothing at all. Doing so would end the debates once and for all. I would even go so far as to offer the Republicans $1 trillion in tax cuts, but they could engage in no spending. The Dems would get the same offer.
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The current position of the country is that we're building a bridge from two separate sides of the river. The problem is that one party wants to build a massive suspension bridge (Dems and spending) and the other wants to build a pontoon bridge that can be taken out of the water and moved about (Repubs and taxes). As anyone knows, those are two different designs and they don't marry up. There is nothing particularly wrong with either design. They both serve their purposes. But those purposes are not the same. This is why a 60/40 compromise is so troubling. A 60% built suspension bridge offers an excellent view of most of the way across the river and a good opportunity to fall in just like the 40% complete pontoon bridge.

The central problem imo with Pascal's wager and the stimulus is: Opportunity Cost. If both premises are true..great. If not then you've wasted a great deal of money and time (especially if the stimulus impedes recovery) that cannot ever be recovered.

But this isn't god or no-god. It might be God or god. But more than that, none of this is pure. For instance, the argument is not 'tax cuts don't work' so much as 'tax cuts don't work as well'. Now there are those who argue 'spending doesn't work, period', but those arguments, bassed in tightly constrained theory, don't hold up well in the loosely constrained real world. At the same time, this is faith based in the sense that we (both U.S. and large, advanced economies) don't do this often.