Stimulus Not Creating Jobs? Solution: More Goofy Signs and a New Website!
No, the government isn’t using ‘our‘ Porkulus logo on their signs (that’s superimposed). Couldn’t resist.
BY: NCViking
After almost 6 months, less than 10% of the Stimulus money has been deployed while unemployment (which was predicted to level off at 8% thanks to the plan) is up to 9.5% and growing. Of course, instead of placing the blame where it belongs on poor enactment, poor oversight, a bad idea, over-selling, and just plain not working as a stimulus, Democrats say the economy was just worse then they thought. The same very dolts that gloomed that this was the worst economic crisis since the great depression. Are they living in an alternate universe? Apparently so.
So what’s the solution? Properly administer and fast-track the already committed funds? Table expensive spending initiatives? Cut the capital gains tax rate? Nope, the administration is making more self-promotional road signs and revamping the Stimulus website. Nice.
Hey, the Stimulus may not be working, but at least the program will be quite dapper as the economy tanks!
Yes, I want these tools to take over health care …
NOT!
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- Prince Composes New Vikings Fight Song (Oh Yes He Did!) - January 22nd, 2010
I didn’t read you post yet Viking… sorry about that.
But it made me thing that I hear that each Porkulus sign costs $300… and within 4 miles of my house I have seen 10 of them. I heard that Illinois (my home, as well as the home of Roland Burris, Rod Blago, and President Obama) has spent a bull crap load of dough on these signs. I have to admit, I am shocked… SHOCKED by the waste of the government.
At least the signmakers are kept in business.
Mrppppphhh!
No doubt the following from bipartisan Governors will help your case:
Governors: Stimulus helped plug state budgets
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-07-18-governors-stimulus_N.htm
(btw: I said as much back in Jan or Feb when I posted a reply on the stimulus)
Also, from the Center on Budgets and Policy Priorities, Correcting Five Myths about the Stimulus
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2870
You can argue that other budget busting measures, such as the reduction in capital gains may be preferred by you. You would have to show that employment would have grown faster than infrastructure.
I do want the authors on this blog to note several important topics about the stimulus debate. Mainstream conservatives and Republicans are:
- not arguing (now or if ever) that other measures would have fixed the economy faster
- or that other measures would have been better
- or that any measure would have produced greater Tax revenues
Ever notice no one since the 1980’s is talking about the Laffer curve any longer? It was never about increased revenues at any tax rate reduction.
One thing the above reply shows is that the Stimulus is working as intended. It is both saving and creating jobs.
Each sign you see is a road crew doing work. Instead of a layoff, there is a job.
The Republican Stimulus Plan: http://republicanwhip.house.gov/Jobs/
From the Wall Street journal at the beginning of the debate:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122757149157954723.html
TGI from back then: http://www.thegreatilluminator.com/blog/?p=1098
… and of course our debate under the recession post: http://www.thegreatilluminator.com/blog/?p=1163
The Recovery Act was presented as a means for immediate stimulus and it has failed miserably by Obama’s own measures. http://www.thegreatilluminator.com/blog/?p=5221
I am quite shocked that a self-professed Libertarian as yourself would not be outraged at the ineffectiveness of the stimulus to this point. Amazing that you instead defend it with “please prove to me tax cuts would have worked”. We will never know if tax cut ideas TGI presented or the stimulus Republicans pitched that was ignored, the Wall Street Journal or others would have worked because they didn’t even get considered. Obama got his stimulus, he owns it, it has failed miserably to this point. Conservatives said unanimously that it WOULD NOT be immediate stimulus and it wasn’t. Case closed.
Your reply is completely negated by the fact that Governors, both Republicans and Democrats say that the bill saved their budgets and jobs – just as I predicted it would.
Any job it creates or preserves is a job saved. Every job site that has a sign saying American Recovery And Reinvestment Act is a place where people are working, where families are saved.
You can ding Obama for the stimulus, but you cannot take away that jobs are preserved. Now imagine how many jobs will be saved or created when the stimulus is in full effect!
Yes, I am a libertarian. That means I believe in liberty: personal, bill of rights type liberty. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with every goofy Republican plan to destroy jobs in America.
The Republican plan that you link to is a cruel joke of a plan. It does minimally reduce taxes, but it creates no jobs whatsoever. When companies are in fear of going out of business, giving them a 20% tax reduction will not save them. The cruel joke is that the proposed Republican plan would cut their taxes by 100%!
No respected economist ever supported or showed how this plan would create jobs, or get us out of a recession.
That should be a big signal to conservatives. Just how much credibility are Republicans building by proposing plans that no economist supports?
More signals that Republicans are out of touch: back in Jan they were saying this is a normal business cycle. With joblessness already in double digits in 15 states and joblessness projected to surpass 1982-1983 levels by early Fall, Republicans are beginning to see what everyone else has been saying for a long time: this is going to get worse.
No Republican has come up with a plan that was better at job creation than the stimulus. By better, let’s define it in a traditional sense: more effective, more jobs, less expensive, even more immediate.
Any job creation and preservation is better than none. The Fed Gov wanted to avoid the serious issues created by the Hoover Administration when it did nothing and caused the GDP and stock market to drop to 10% of its original value.
When you have nothing left to harp about, your choice is because it’s not fast enough. Just keep copying Michelle Malkin. Nice.
Negated? That is an absolutely ridiculous statement! First: I proposed bridge-loans to states to help cover shortfalls, if needed, read our debate. Second: The stimulus was NOT sold to the American people as only a state budget stop-gap, but as a means to stop the unemployment blood-letting at 8% and immediately stimulate the economy. It did NEITHER.
Many predicted its failure and were right.
http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/alternate_version.html
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090714/OPINION01/907140314/1008/Editorial–Obama-s-stimulus-plan-is-not-working
Also, Libertarians find giant government spending and soaring deficits appalling … they advocate government minimalism and fiscal responsibility. The Stimulus is NEITHER.
Go ahead and pick more fly turds out of this pepper … have at it!
With all due respect Viking, all those economists listed in your Cato link are not credible. None of them are Stimutologists with the credibility to comment on this topic. Any words they say are like dust on your already partisan lips. You can not prove anything because the debate on this topic is already over. A group of Democratic governors with token Republican support stated unequivocally that Obama is completely right, and that you are completely wrong.
Nuf said.
NC Viking,
Settle down. Your posts have a high shrill factor. You are rushing to predict that it failed when only 10% was spent.
Maybe you would have wanted the stimulus to be spent 100%, all at once, and hold the unemployment at 8% forever. I doubt anyone ever thought that.
If 10% saved many state budgets, then by definition it is already a success. 10% created and saved jobs, then it follows that the other 90% will create commensurably 9x more jobs.
It defies logic to say otherwise.
Also, it defies logic to argue tax cuts. When fully implemented, the $800B stimulus times some simple multiplier effect of say 3x generates $2.4T effect in the economy. Every road construction project employs the suppliers, architects, project managers, consultants, and each of them in turn buys supplies, lunches, equipment, etc…
To get the same effect from taxes, you would have to cut taxes by $800B. Since revenues are only $1.9T, you would have to cut taxes by 40%. The Republican plan was to tweak taxes at the lowest end, where the total economic impact would likely be less than 5%, or for small business that pay taxes, whose total effect would have been another 5%.
Next, this libertarian has already explained that it is about my freedom – not about an arbitrary shutdown government spending. Don’t like it? Leave this libertarian alone.
It was sold as ‘immediate’ stimulus that would create 3 million jobs by June and hold unemployment at 8%. This is what Obama said, not me or Conservatives. He got the stimulus, he owns its failure.
As for the tax cuts as stimulus debate, readers can go to the link http://www.thegreatilluminator.com/blog/?p=1163 and read our debate as to not rehash it again.
You could not be more wrong about the Stimulus Bill, and this time by your own words!
The link you provided above points to our debate on the 11th February 2009. The only posts with the word ‘immediate’ are from your own posts. You repeatedly claim that an ‘immediate’ infusion to the economy is necessary.
recovery dot gov is the official government source for how and where the stimulus bill is being spent. There is a chart on its home page that clearly shows money availability and spending that was specifically intended to be spent slowly.
Specifically, deliberately, slowly, spread out. All the things you claim the bill is not.
I went through the entire WSJ library on the stimulus – not a single statement from anyone, D or R, that said unemployment would stop at 8%. In fact it said quite the opposite.
Specifically, it said that
- 1/2 of the money would be available in 2009
- 1/2 of the money in 2010
- It would create (once fully deployed) 3 – 4 million jobs
- Simple math would tell you that 4 million jobs is about a 3 – 3.5% unemployment rate
- All these numbers can promise us is that ff we hit 11% unemployment, the bill would keep us from hitting a 14% unemployment rate.
Once again, you could not be more wrong about the subject.
This is Obama’s bill. I am proud of Obama for doing something to help Americans.
Yes, I am wrong.
http://www.factcheck.org/politics/making_sense_of_stimulus_spending.html
Still wrong. You claim it’s not working at all. Your reasoning is that unemployment didn’t hold at 8%, as promised by some third party study.
It just shows how much of a mess was left after the collapse of housing and equities.
Don’t you care for Americans at all? Don’t you care about people losing jobs? Won’t a sinking economy also hurt your business?
Here is the part where you are very wrong. You cannot call it not-working simply because there was a projected unemployment of 9% and estimated savings were 1.5%, or whether actual is 14.5% and the stimulus helps to hold it at 11.5%.
You are wrong to call out Obama because it wasn’t his staff that predicted 9.5% with a promise to hold at 8%.
You are wrong.
The Obama Administration foretasted unemployment not to exceed 8% with the passage of the stimulus and used this to sell the program, not Conservatives, not me. This is not in dispute by anyone or any news outlet … not even the administration, only you. Conservatives scoffed at the stimulus and said it would do little to nothing in the short term to save jobs and was not ’stimulus’ as promoted. I will let the readers follow our standing arguments on this and come up with their own conclusion of who is right and who is wrong.
Still wrong. Here is where the debate stands
- In January, it is forecast (not foretasted as you put it) that unemployment would reach 9.5% and that the stimulus would reduce unemployment to 8%
- By May it is clear that unemployment will reach 11%+.
- It is now clear we really really really needed the stimulus much more than we ever thought so in the past.
- Your conclusion: Wow, not 8%? Fail!
I won’t blame Bush, et al, but will history?
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