Wednesday, February 17, 2010

It's the one-year anniversary of the stimulus bill

Did it help or not?

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter wants to influence your decision with the graphs included in this story from The New York Times.

35 comments:

  1. Well, everything seems the same to me… So I'd have to say no.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Only a portion of the stimulus money has been used.So you want notice a differance until they get off there buts and do something with the money.I think rebuilding the infastructure would be a good start along with the electric grid.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DJ: Please post the graph from yesterday's New York Times' article by David Leonhardt. The graph shows GDP, employment and stock market figures from before and after the stimulus. It's startling. You can argue cause and effect but that graph is something. Every Democrat in the Country should be walking around passing out that graph.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yea it worked for the banks, insurance companies and GM & Chrysler… but sure did nothing for jobs or the working folks.

    If they haven’t spent all of the money, then maybe they should stop the printing presses… The entire government (local, state & fed) needs to quit spending money…

    ReplyDelete
  5. Does that include workers compensation? Medicare, reduced school lunches? Snow removal, dog wardens, police &fire? Please enlighten.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Where would we have landed without the stim pkg? I did not see breadlines etc... I have heard stories of what my grandparents lived through in the depression, and thank God that we did not get to that point. It's nice that we can all sit back and play armchair QB after the fact. It is a real shame that we don't ever have the benefit of looking back at something and knowing what the result would have been if we'd have gone the other way. (no stim pkg) As we all have internet access, I am assuming that no one on here is homeless, and can at least has internet access. Boy, we have it really bad don't we!?!? Things could always be better, but they could also always be worse. Shouldn't we be thankful for what we have and make the best of it?

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9DTFFF83&show_article=1

    ReplyDelete
  8. I smiled at the way you chose to post the NYT graph. To your credit, you did post it. But, the way you characterized it as me wanting to influence people's decision with a NYT graph sounds a lot like you trying to delegitimize it out of the gate. "There go those lib elite at the times again trying to influence us away from what we already know is the truth by presenting us with their fancy statistics." Right? It's similar to the way you constantly refer to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. It's subtle but obvious and, I would guess, so second nature to you that you don't even notice you're doing it. I was just trying to take your question and answer it with some objective information. As I said, you can argue the causal relationship, you could also argue that it won't last or we spent too much to pull out of the downward spiral. But, that IS a startling turnaround that coincides with the stim and BHO taking office. Obviously, I'm happy to see it but even I was shocked at how immediate and extreme the reversal has been. The point of the article (and those stats) is that when you're 10 steps below horrific you can take 15 steps up and still only be at bad. People need to stop thinking we haven't made enormous progress just because things aren't good yet. BTW: Kudos to the GOP b/c they are, as usual, winning the spin/message war.

    ReplyDelete
  9. If interested in local use of stimulus money, go to the Ohio Auditor of State website and select Stimulus Tracker and then Darke County. Greenville City School District received $424,612.96 and has spent beginning mid-August 2009 the sum of $259,159.88 for "utilities, consortium fees and legal fees" for services necessary for district function.

    ReplyDelete
  10. 7:24 ... Yes, give me credit, because I despise everything about the New York Times.

    I think the New York Times went out and cherry-picked the best three graphs they could to back their guy. The "big media" has ignored the damning graph which shows what the BO administration predicted would happen with unemployment under stimulus vs. what actually happened. I thought about posting it, but I thought I'd let the democrat (liberal, left, whatever) argument stand for once.

    There's one HUGE problem with any defense of the stimulus - and that is that half the money isn't spent yet. The stated purpose for the stimulus was to jump-start the economy (and to avoid a depression), so why is money still out there unspent? [Answer: so people will get their goodies and feel happy in an election year.]

    Fortunately, I don't have too fight to hard on this one. The polling show that very few people are buying the NYT's advocacy on this one.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The reason I wanted you to post the graph and not the article was because I figured you'd try to descredit the figures because they happen to be found in a NYT article. However, those ARE the numbers. You can call it cherry-picking if you want but what other measuring stick are you going to use if not those figures? I know you don't like what the figures show because they don't jive with the GOP narrative but economists of all political stripes will admit that GDP, jobs and the market are pretty big indicators of what's going on in the economy. I'll give you that Obama thought unemployment would be 8%. Obviously, he believed the numbers would be better but they're still much, much better. I'll also give you the delay in rolling it out. I'm confident politics played a part in that. As far as what the polling shows--that's why I gave the GOP kudos for winning the spin and that's really my main point. The truth is that the people's perceptions are wrong. Partly people's perceptions are wrong b/c they aren't aware of or don't understand the facts (which I hope I helped change). Partly people's perceptions are wrong because no matter how obvious the truth might be they can't get beyond how much they "despise everything about" the other side (which people can only change in themselves).

    ReplyDelete
  12. It would be a potential copyright violation for me to copy the NYT's graphs. And they probably don't like me to begin with. Not worth the risk.

    I don't need to discredit your/NYT's figures when only 6% of Americans believe that the stimulus actually created jobs (and that's according to a NYT poll ... http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/02/fail-only-6-of-americans-believe-obamas-787-billion-stimulus-created-jobs/).

    ReplyDelete
  13. DJ: Well, when you go from losing 700K jobs/mo to more or less breaking even, it's not going to feel like jobs are being created because the net monthly figure is roughly zero. The point is it takes a huge step in the right direction to stop losing jobs at such a catostrophic rate. That doesn't change the fact that the market has gone up 60% in the last year, the GDP had gone from -5% to +5% growth in the last year and the jobs numbers have gone from -700K/mo to 0/mo. Those are eyepopping figures.

    ReplyDelete
  14. How many jobs did the frisbee park generate? or the community center over in Anderson In.?
    They should use what's left on roads, sewer plants etc.
    Or better yet, don't spend it and keep it off the debt pile.

    ReplyDelete
  15. something's going to pop soon, but it isn't my eyes ... :)

    (you are a good advocate for your guy, I will admit)

    ReplyDelete
  16. I think that the stimulus money should only be used to purchase materials that are made in the USA and all work has to be performed by legal workers that are registered and paying taxes.

    ReplyDelete
  17. The stimulus bill did one thing for sure. It packed tons and tons of debt onto the next generation. I'm sure they'll thank us for it. Just like all my buddies on my golf cart forum that are getting a FREE golf cart, that so eloquently is called a neighborhood electric vehicle. Guess where the carts are manufactured… CHINA… a great use of taxpayer money to stimulate the economy… but not ours. What a joke this administration is…

    ReplyDelete
  18. The stimulus bill has seemed to create a lot of new job openings in congress ... :)

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hopefully the passage of this bogus spending (borrowing) bill will end alot of incumbents jobs in November!!!! DO AMERICA A FAVOR... vote 'em out...

    A few quotes from Thomas Jefferson that BHO doesn't seem to have ever read, or else he doesn't believe...

    "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

    "It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."

    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

    How I wish we had some real servents in politics today....

    ReplyDelete
  20. The stimulus plan wasn't designed to be a quick fix. It took us a few tragic years thanks to the election of 2000 and again in 2004 to get into this seriously tragic situation. But the upside is it seems is that it has indeed saved hundreds of thousands of jobs from being otherwise discontinued thus allowing people to keep their employment, i.e. construction, teachers, police, etc. Since only about half of it has been spent it is far too early to see the full scope of its full benefits but you can bet without it, there would have been serious consequences for many more Americans than what we currently see in a far worse situation. While I don't agree with some of OBAMA's decisions/policies I am willing to give him the same chance as we gave BUSH to prove himself before judging him so harshly as so many have after only one year in office. What I find ironic is "some" of those in Washington which constantly complain and stir the pot about the spending of this stimulus bill but yet go home to their districts to celebrate job creation & retention programs through various ribbon cutting ceremonies which the stimulus funds have help to create! Patience is a virtue. The man was elected to a 4 year term I suggest we allow him his time to that which he was elected just as we did GEORGE & company, before further nasty, negative hate filled, uncivil and uncalled for comments from the Darke County peaNUT gallary! That's MY opinion, whats yours ... (to steal a phrase from you know who)

    ReplyDelete
  21. How can anyone call this successful? The price tag to create (or save) jobs equals out to $250,000 per job! Yet the average cost for the private sector to create a job is $32,000. Once again, the wild inefficiency of government is stunning. Spend $250,000 to create a job that pays what?

    And if the stimulus has done such a wonderful job to get us progressing in the right direction, then why do we need to keep spending? It's money we don't have and will have to pay back multi-fold over generations. The answer has already been stated here: to fund a political agenda.

    The answer to financial problems isn't spending of borrowed money. We will be paying this money back when the next lull in the natural economic cycle hits. Will we have to spend our way out of that too? And the next? As any financial planner will tell you, the first step to getting out of debt it to stop racking up debt. Time for government to cut up the credit cards and start slashing the budget. Of course, the answer we'll probably hear is tax increases. But again, bringing it back to the individual level, it isn't an income problem, it's a spending problem.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Don't be so quick to condem the dems in congress for this fiasco. The reps also have backs to rub, they will get theirs one day.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I don't honestly know if many of these local commentors are uninformed, or simply Partisan Republicans. The fact is that the federal stimulus has been supplanting state funding of the schools and unemployment for nearly a year. We heard the gripers over the 3.39 mill school levy. How about if your RE taxes would have had to increase by half or more just to keep the schools operating? And what if many of your neighbors had not received unemployment checks?
    The State of Ohio is broke and has used the stimulus to keep afloat, as are many other states. If the stimulus had been instituted under a Republican President, you can bet the comments here would have drastically changed.

    ReplyDelete
  24. If you lost your job and still don't have one the answer would be no. If you found a job, the answer would be yes. If you were lucky and have been ok it just depends on what set of numbers that you want to believe. The info being delivered to general public is foggy at best. I'm with you Vet!

    ReplyDelete
  25. For all its faults, the stimulus was an infinitely better use of public debt than was the Iraq War! Anybody want to argue with that?

    ReplyDelete
  26. Dear Outraged, Did you think about what you posted before you typed it? You are sort of making the point from above that the government stimulus is a joke as about everything spent has went to fund other government entities. While paying unemployment benifits can help individuals for a bit it can not continue indefinitly or you start calling it welfare. Where in the heck does it help with private sector jobs? Government has to quit spending and expanding as it will run out of enough private sector taxpayers to fund it! Since you mentioned the 3.39 mil school levy and the RE taxes the way that you did, I am assuming that you are a "government" educator or that you work in the "system". As a government entity and/or employee, you are, for lack of a better word, a "drain", necessary or not, to the private sector taxpayer. Your government entity has no requirement to be thrifty as there is nobody to hold it accountable except for the voting taxpayer. When the voting taxpayer disagrees, he or she is called "uninformed" and/or partisan. If I were you, I don't think uninformed and partisan is a word that I would be using before taking a look in the mirror.

    Apparently Uninformed

    ReplyDelete
  27. You, 11:59, missed the entire point. In your tirade you said nothing about whether you are or are not okay with a drastic increase in your taxes if it had not been for the stimulus. Perhaps because the partisan reference struck a nerve?

    ReplyDelete
  28. "Unexpected" ... http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/18/no-one-expects-rising-unemployment/

    ReplyDelete
  29. Well if the stimulus money is being used to help out with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and paying unemployment to people, exactly how many jobs has that created? I work in the construction business and have been on jobs that are funded by the stimulus bill and i can tell you for a fact that all the jobs we have done, we havent created one single job. It didnt save any jobs. The only thing it did was give me a little bit more overtime pay everyweek. So in my aspect of this bill, it is not working at all. It was supposed to keep unemployment below the 8.00% ceiling, and what is it at right now?? It was supposed to create 3.6million jobs and what has it done so far? If you take the jobs that this bill has created and the jobs that were lost since it was passed then you are looking at a negative 7 million jobs that this administration has done.... im not blaming democrats or republicans, i can say that everyone in there that put earmarks in the bill should be VOTED OUT!!! The president of the United States said in his campaign that he would not sign a bill that had earmarks in it.... His first bill had over 9000 earmarks and he was more than happy to sign it! WHAT A JOKE THIS WHOLE ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESS IS

    ReplyDelete
  30. A "must read."
    http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/tea_party_movement

    ReplyDelete
  31. Does anybody really believe things would be any better had a different administration been voted in?

    I am by no means a political scholar, but the government(under any party) doesn't really give a hill o' beans about any of us…

    ReplyDelete
  32. Some of these posts remind me of something that may anger some of you. Our founders established our representative form of democracy because they believed the average guy neither had the time nor the capacity (nearly everyone was illiterate then) to competently participate in our democracy. I am constantly reading/hearing things like 3:22PM's comments wherein 3:22PM doesn't make the connection between the unemployment benefits/overtime pay and the fact that he and everyone else spent those $$ on an extra cheeseburger and the cheeseburger guy then went down the street and bought an extra gallon of gas. That spending (and the corresponding multiplier effect) is a stimulation of the economy which creates/created jobs. It's called macroeconomics and helps explain the graphs in the NYT article. If you want to conclude the administration is a joke, fine. Maybe you're right. But, when so many display a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues, it makes me curious how people would vote if they really understood what was going on. Thomas Jefferson probably had it right. As much as we like to rant about Congress, I sometimes wonder whether we should thank God (and/or Thomas Jefferson) that all those idiots in Washington are calling the shots and not us. DJ: I just defended the indefensible (congress). Top that.

    ReplyDelete
  33. 5:20, Can't, but you remind me of another peave that I have about the people that we let vote. I am of the opinion that people taking any kind of government subsistance, welfare, medicade and the like, should have their voting privleges revoked until they can prove that they no longer partake and if you don't own property, you should have no say as to how much property taxes that property owners have to pay.

    Outraged, I don't think I missed your point. You said it yourself the state is broke and if the funds are not coming then the cuts have to be made. Then, we'll see what people really want to fund. I see government bailing out government helping nothing. The reason the private sector is holding off spending and hiring is no one knows just how far this government is going to go with taxes and if/when inflation is going to hit. You can't have it both ways. You can not expect people to pay high taxes and then have money to spend for the extras that keep the economy afloat. The economy grows when people spend their money. Your own congressmen can't and will not even tell you the truth. All they want to do is blow smoke. Maybe I could have supported the stimulus if it paid for your new school. LOL! I do not believe that I said I was against unemployment, it is just after a while, no matter how it hurts, it has to stop. I have been there and I did not get an endless supply of checks and I had a house payment(I hadn't even made my first payment), no insurance and all else that goes with it and I survived. I feel the same about the generational welfare "crisis", it also has to stop. I feel that drastically raising taxes will kill off any of the so called gains that has been reported that I haven't seen, my portfolio still sucks!

    If government would have taken the $787B and given $1 million to every working person over 50 and had a stipulation that they had to give up their job to make way for others and bail out of S.S., the government would not have had to spend $787B and we would likely be out of the mess we're in? This is a tough situation that we are in. I do realize that I am not the brightest crayon in the box, but if I ran my personal finances like government, I'd be locked up.

    Apparently Uninformed

    ReplyDelete
  34. Mr. Uninformed: You know, after reading your last post I feel we have a lot of common ground. Like within Congress, that commonality is never reached because of the influence of partisan ideology. While I share your loathing of government welfare, it also extends to that given to business. We witnessed the most glaring example last fall, when our national leadership was totally exposed in their practice of the privatization of profits and the socializstion of losses.
    I also share your desire for spending cuts, if they universal. Government, as well as most of us individually, has spent beyond its means for far too long. It is unfortunate that some like us direct our anger toward each other, rather than at our true enemies in the Congress.

    ReplyDelete

Featured Posts

/* Track outbound links in Google Analytics */