I imagine there are many conservatives out there, believers in free markets, who know in their gut that the stimulus plan is a mistake.  Who well understand there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  But perhaps it has not always been easy to refute facile arguments in favor of the plan.

It is now.  The Wall Street Journal has served up three succinct paragraphs that pulverize the essence of the Obama plan. They serve as a handy primer or–should you prefer a martial metaphor–provide the ammo to defeat the arguments most commonly made on behalf of the $1 trillion spending bill.

The kernels of wisdom are contained in a WSJ editorial entitled “The Stimulus Tragedy.” Here they are:

Mr. Obama is now endorsing a sort of reductionist Keynesianism that argues that any government spending is an economic stimulus. This is so manifestly false that we doubt Mr. Obama really believes it. He has to know that it matters what the government spends the money on, as well as how it is financed. A dollar doled out in jobless benefits may well be spent by the worker who receives it. That $1 of spending will count as economic activity and add to GDP.

But that same dollar can’t be conjured out of thin air. The government has to take that dollar away from someone else — either in higher taxes, or by issuing new debt in the form of a bond. The person who is taxed or buys the bond will have $1 less to spend. If the beneficiary of that $1 spends it on something less productive than the taxed American or the lender would have, then the net impact on growth will be negative.

Some Democrats claim these transfer payments are stimulating because they go mainly to poor people, who immediately spend the money. Tax cuts for business or for incomes across the board won’t work, they add, because those tax cuts go disproportionately to “the rich,” who will save the money. But a saved $1 doesn’t vanish from the economy, unless it is stuffed into a mattress. It enters the financial system, where it is lent to others; or it is invested in the stock market as capital for businesses; or it is invested in entirely new businesses, which are the real drivers of job creation and prosperity.

I might just have to blow the dust off my printer and keep a copy of those paragraphs in my back pocket, to break out next time someone tries to argue, as Barney Frank did on Meet The Press yesterday, that sending countless billions back to state governments is a great idea.

Note: those who prefer their arguments in video rather than written form are encouraged to check out two YouTubes, here and here, in which Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute makes a similarly concise case as to why the Obama stimulus plan won’t work.