I’m not ideological when it comes to politics. I just want to know the truth. Whenever a pundit or politician opens their mouth I might as well be listening to someone trying to convince me that Santa is totally real and will be coming to a chimney near me.
The only thing I believe about any politician is that every single word that comes out of their mouth is meant to benefit them and their party. So I don’t believe any politician when they are making a case for or against the stimulus.
That makes things hard being that they are the people the news goes to for “straight answers.” I also don’t believe commentators on the news. They also are agenda driven.
I guess this is why I like following politics. Its a mystery where you have to try to piece together the real story yourself.
One source I am fairly open to trusting is FactCheck. They seem to be pretty unbiased. Although, I believe everyone has some sort of agenda. It helps me a great deal to know what that agenda is before I go in. I’m not sure what FactCheck’s agenda is yet.
But just the same, I am open to what they say.
Here’s their take on the stimulus, if you are interested:
Did the Stimulus Create Jobs? | FactCheck.org
As we have written before, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report in August that said the stimulus bill has “[l]owered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points” and “[i]ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.”
I suspect the stimulus could have been implemented better. But I think I’m in the camp that this was a wise move. I’m also swayed by the fact that Greenspan keeping interest rates too low was a major contributor to this mess. (I was, and probably still am, an avid fan of Greenspan, btw.). Additionally, we have been trying lower tax rates for people for about 10 years now. That hasn’t appeared to make jobs.
So, if low taxes and low interest rates aren’t making jobs… what else will? I’m truly glad I’m not qualified or positioned to make the decisions in this situation. It’s a huge series of unknown unknowns. I think both George Bush and Obama made the right moves to get us out of this as best they could.
I wish, in hindsight, that the Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers never happened. So do most people. But I probably wouldn’t have propped it up as the Fed Chairman. It was outside of his jurisdiction at the time. I feel he did the right things after this bankruptcy. But that caused a huge world of hurt letting it fall.
I know a ton of people are out of work. I know a ton of people are unhappy and angry. But I think without the stimulus it would be about 1.3% worse which is actually a lot.
Comments
5 responses to “Did the Stimulus Create Jobs? | FactCheck.org”
LA Times has a good article today about jobs created by stimulus money that will probably go away once the subsidy is eliminated. It created $10 per hour jobs. By all estimations the stimulus was and is a disaster and any benefit will be offset by the cost down the road. Taking money out of the economy and allocated to favored constituants is always bad for the population as a whole.
A guess a link would have been nice: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-subsidized-jobs-20100929,0,5053231.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29
Because I think I’m for the stimulus, I always want to be careful not to see everything through my filter.
But it appeared to me that that article was about the good the stimulus did.
“This program has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations,” said David Hansell, acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Maybe if we never would have had it someone else would have given these people jobs? I really want to see that perspective.
But I have difficulty seeing how the stimulus caused private sector jobs to decrease during this time. Maybe the long-term effects of being in debt will cause some adverse effects. But I can’t see how it slowed growth in the last year or so.
Thanks for posting!
Sage
There was another quote that said:
“Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe said many adults employed through the program have made the transition to permanent, unsubsidized jobs.”
Clearly this piece is put out to be in favor of the stimulus. So I’m sure there are some stories of misuse and waste that could be focused on.
I don’t think I’m particularly concerned about the individual suffering of people had there not been a stimulus bill. I think I’m more concerned about increases in crime, and further drags on not having enough consumer spending.
I really think the government has just been trying to get money into the system. Throwing it from helicopters probably would have been a fine strategy had people not completely shrieked in terror and disbelief. Although, that might have increased the crime problem 🙂
Ah. I usually completely discount the posiive spin by bureaucrats. I like your helicopter idea. Just don’t throw turkeys from them.