You Will Most Likely Hate Reading This

Here is a disgusting shocker but apparently a fact of life. Two different but almost always reliable sources say (puke, gag, heart attack) handouts to low income people do the most to aid recovery almost instantly. More than tax cuts, more than anything focused on the middle class (they all tend to save instead of spend), the rich like corporations (they will spend it but wait a long time before they do). Why do the bums among us get the economy moving faster? They are out of any credit options, most likely in need so they will spend, they owe so they don't have bank accounts (they cannot save even if they wanted to), so they spend whatever they can get their hands on. Below is a synopsis of how stimulus works.
5. What types of tax cuts and transfer payments have powerful short-term effects?

Temporary Increase in Food Stamps 1.73
Extending Unemployment Insurance Benefits 1.63
Increased Infrastructure Spending 1.59
General Aid to State Governments 1.38
Payroll Tax Holiday 1.28
Refundable Lump-Sum Tax Rebate 1.22
Across the Board Tax Cut 1.03
Non-refundable Lump-Sum Tax Rebate 1.01
Extend Alternative Minimum Tax Patch 0.49
Make Dividend and Capital Gains Tax Cuts Permanent 0.38
Make Bush Income Tax Cuts Permanent 0.31
Cut in Corporate Tax Rate 0.30
Accelerated Depreciation 0.25

Government money to the poor both helps those most affected by a recession and has the greatest cost-effectiveness. From "Options for Responding to Short-Term Economic Weakness", CBO, January 2008 (Color italic emphasis added), pages 6-7:

Cost-Effectiveness. In general, stimulus may be generated through policies that affect the spending of households, businesses, or government. The cost-effectiveness of stimulus varies within those categories of policies as well as across them. The same dollar amount of spending increases or tax reductions can have significantly different effects on overall demand, depending on how it is provided and to whom.

Households. In general, tax cuts or increases in transfer payments from the government to people (such as Food Stamps or unemployment insurance benefits) increase household demand by providing consumers with additional spending power. The bigger the chunk of that additional income that consumers are willing to spend instead of save, the more stimulus there will be from a particular tax reduction or increase in government transfer payments. But households do not predictably spend a fixed proportion of the extra income left in their hands when taxes are reduced or transfers are increased. Rather, a household's propensity to consume appears to vary with its income and depends on expectations of the household of what will happen to that income over the longer term. A household's consumption also varies for other reasons that are little understood.

Households are particularly likely to spend a greater share of a temporary reduction in taxes or additional transfer payments if they are credit constrained (that is, they have borrowed as much money as creditors will lend them). Given that these households would probably borrow additional money if given the opportunity, they are unlikely to save additional income. They are therefore likely to spend a greater proportion of a tax reduction or a transfer increase than other people who have access to credit. Lower-income households are more likely to be credit constrained and more likely to be among those with the highest propensity to spend. Therefore, policies aimed at lower-income households tend to have greater stimulative effects. So we need the poor in order to pull out of this one. This is only a PART of the entire study, which can be found HERE.