Bill Powell makes an argument that China has the stimulus plan that the U.S. needs and the U.S. has the stimulus plan that China needs.

Consider: almost half of China's $585 billion economic stimulus program, announced last November to much fanfare, is earmarked for infrastructure spending on railroads and highways and power grids. Another 25% will go to reconstruct entire towns in Sichuan province, which were devastated by last year's earthquake. These are "shovel ready" infrastructure projects...

Contrast China's economic rescue effort with the stimulus package recently signed into law by President Barack Obama. In the U.S., despite all the talk about "shovel ready" construction projects, only about $100 billion of the $787 billion in stimulus spending will go toward new infrastructure this year. Another $282 billion goes for tax cuts or rebates, much of which, as economist Nouriel Roubini argues, will likely be saved, not spent. A big chunk of the rest of the package will go, via the states, toward social services: increased unemployment benefits, more money for food stamps, and for health care spending for the poor and the elderly.

In other words, Washington is providing lots of funding for "social safety net" programs — precisely the kind of programs that poor and unemployed Chinese really need and which the government only barely provides. Meanwhile China is throwing money at infrastructure projects to a degree that the U.S. — with its creaky bridges, potholed roads, crumbling schools and obsolete airports — hasn't seen in decades. There is some infrastructure spending in the U.S. plan, to be sure, but not enough, many economists believe, to deliver a real jolt to a moribund economy.