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richardhutnik on 24 August 2010
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HappySqurriel said:
Rath said:

Ok without checking whether the statistics actually hold up or not (so assuming he is correct) he misses two important points I believe.

1) The stimulus helped the economy recover, therefore the costs of the stimulus are at least to some point offset by the stronger economy.

2) The stimulus spending wasn't a straight up loss. The GM deal is a good example of this, $50B outlay and now the govt owns about $100B of GM.


First, the obvious question, if the stimulus helped the economy recover why is unemployment so high and why are so many people convinced that we will face a double dip (or more appropriately that we never left the initial recession)?

Secondly, I would just like to point out that since the stimulus was funded through deficit spending when the spending slows down or stops it will act as an overall drag to the economy because you will have to pay interest on it; and, being that it is unlikely that the US government will every pay down any of the principle, the total negative effect from the stimulus will inevitably be several times larger than the total positive effect from the stimulus.

I can ask  the same about Bush tax cuts.  If they were so great for economic growth, why was job creation so poor and why didn't they sustain any growth and we had the meltdown?

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

What you said about deficit spending doubles for tax cuts to regarding the deficits.  Creating jobs in China doesn't help the United States.