Many different industries are projecting far lower unemployment numbers than they were just months ago directly because of the stimulus. Construction and Education are two great examples that were literally saved on their way to the chopping block. Millions of jobs will and have already been saved. If you want to invest your money, look into construction.
Furthermore, when people aren't working, they can't pay taxes. When people aren't working, they aren't making any income to spend elsewhere so that other people aren't making much income and might lose their job. Then they can't pay taxes. The government could potentially lose more money in the long term in tax revenue if the economy slips even further and takes even longer to recover.
And strong fiscal policy does work. You want an example? World War II. Who do you think was the one spending all the money that got us out of the Great Depression finally? The government! This is why I find it laughable when people say that fiscal policy didn't get us out of the Great Depression and that World War II did. World War II was fiscal policy on a massive scale. If anything, it proves that FDR didn't do ENOUGH during the Great Depression. It took the level of government spending we saw during WWII to get us out of it.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
