when you spend almost 800 billion? no one is saying it will not or cannot work. they are saying other means would have worked faster and better. the negatives are large.
That was around the time libs in this forum were downplaying any good news on the economy by asking where the jobs were.
Getting back to the meat of the epi study... I thought this was interesting. Furthermore, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable personal income rose by 3.2% in the quarter, after rising by only 1% in the previous quarter. A large contribution to this increase was made by the Making Work Pay tax credit passed in conjunction with the ARRA, as this was the first full quarter that the credit was in effect. Inflation-adjusted transfer payments (including a one-time payment to Social Security recipients) rose at an annual rate of over 6% in the quarter as well. This increase in disposable personal incomes did not translate into a sharp boost in consumption spending because the personal savings rate jumped again — rising to 5.2% in the second quarter, up from 4% in the previous quarter. This slippage between personal incomes and consumption spending caused by a rising savings rate makes plain that, instead of focusing on even more tax cuts, it was wise to make sure that much of the ARRA was devoted to direct public investment spending. The public investment spending in the ARRA, while not having a significant impact in the second quarter, will provide an even stronger boost to the economy in quarters to come. To me, this validates Krugman's complaints about the bill being not big enough and too much being allocated to a tax "rebate" policy that was already proven a failure when Bush tried it. They tried to get all sneaky by claiming the extra "change" in checks would be more effective than a lump sum. Neither works when the situation is bad all over. One can claim that it was Republican influence in getting those rebates, but that would only validate criticism that Dem leadership conceded too much at the expense of one or two stray Senate votes. With a "C" grade on the stimulus, Obama's best hope is to pass a lot of other stuff (cough Healthcare cough) to distract from increasing unemployment and stagnant wages until phase 2 of the stimulus kicks in. People being shortsighted as they are will likely clamor for "free healthcare" by next year even if we won't see anything noticable until 2013...
Wrong. I believe they said only about 80 billion had actually been spent. Without starting a big debate, there are always more than 1 way to skin a cat. Partisan thinks only his way will work. Hater hates it even when the other guy's plan works.
I just read the Armchair Economist and now I'm all confused about unemployment, because according to Landsburg unemployment can be a good thing.
Mr. McCain begs to differ. God, sometimes he makes me embarrassed to live out here. It's like if your dad met your friends in his boxers. Thats old McCainy.
jobs are always the last thing to recover, usually a year after a recession has ended. Stimulas works to end the recession first - when the GDP is dropping at 6% a qtr - we're heading into economic disaster. Stimulas puts the breaks on that, and helps set the stage for an upward business cycle. The stock market is a leading indicator, employment is a lagging indicator. GDP is a current indicator. The stock market rose, now we see GDP stabalizing. But Jobs won't groww for a while. It takes years some times to see job growth from a stimulous. Companies are going to hold off hiring as long as they can. It's just the way it works.
a good thing? Maybe a necessary thing at times. It'd be a good thing if the market forced people out of business whose labor was wasteful, at least until they got into a useful field.
And the jobs never really turned up, then it turned out that the growth in the early-mid 00's was basically a mirage based on a credit bubble, and it collapsed last year. Good comeback otherwise though!
So? So was the economy of the 90's. So is the economy now. The whole point of the stimulus was to do with spending what we we did in the early 00's with interest rate cuts.
But at a fairly slow rate and if I recall employment levels never got back to what it was in the 90's. If job growth is all you are concerned about then does that mean that the previous recovery wasn't a true recovery since jobs never got back to where they were?
While conservatives where crowing about the stock market. It goes both ways. Anyway I'm not concerned about defending libs or conservs but want to know what Bigtexxx thinks since from what I recall a few years ago he put a lot of stock pardon the pun, in things like where the stock market was at and poo poohed job statistics.
wrong, the economy of the 90's was powered by a real technology boom. yes the tech bubble popped at the end, but it didn't result end the dissapperance of wealth that the 00's bubble and subsequent popping caused. the stock market still more than trippled in wealth between 1990 and 2000. all of the wealth created this decade is gone.
