Once again, I'm sharing a conversation from Facebook. After "Pastor" Terry Jones called off his planned bonfire of Korans down in Florida, a friend wrote:
"Maybe now we can concentrate on getting people JOBS. RT @dmataconis: Dear America, you just got played for a fool by a wingnut Pastor in Florida."
I "liked" his status update. His brother, on the other hand, had something else to say:
BROTHER OF FRIEND: what we need is more stimulus spending. The 800 billion worked so well we need to waste another 800 billion then maybe we can get the unemployment number down to a respectable 9.1 %
So, I wrote:
ME: Actually, I shudder to think what the jobless rate would be had it not been for the stimulus.
BROTHER OF FRIEND: it would have been better because small buisiness wont hire when they are worried about there taxes going up and there medical costs going up as well.
Now, we all have family members with whom we don't agree. I have a cousin who thinks white people can do no wrong (if you get my drift), and a brother who thinks people on welfare are just lazy. Be that as it may, my friend and another friend of his picked up the conversation because, frankly, I didn't want to blast a member of my friend's family. This is not easy for me, mind you. I've been working on restraint.
FRIEND: ...we've seen firsthand how much companies invested in themselves when given the choice - before and since the recession -- Companies that asked us to wait a few weeks for our paychecks, transferred jobs to East Jabib and treat stockholders, customers and employees like trash. I wouldn't mind criticising the stim spending if I thought it didn't work, but all the impartial people who know better than us say that we'd be in worse shape without that spending. Either way, I'd rather that people argue over spending than bs issues dreamed up for the election cycle.
FRIEND OF FRIEND: The stimulus spending worked. As Economists like Paul Krugman pointed out about before and since, it was about half of what was necessary.
In short, welcome to 1938."
"...the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it — and the nation — in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06krugman. html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rs s
"Any initial government stimulus, say a program of increased government expenditure, puts money into people's hands, which they then spend. The initial government stimulus is the first round. Each dollar spent by the government ultimately becomes income to some people, and, once it has been put into their hands, they spend some fraction of it. That fraction is called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC). Thus the initial increase of expenditures feeds back into a second round of expenditures, made by people, not the government. This then feeds back again into income for yet more people, in an amount equal to the MPC dollars. These people in turn spend a fraction of the MPC, called the MPC squared dollars. This is the third round. But the story is not over yet. Round after round of expenditure follows..."
So... anyway... remember that "tax rebate" Bush gave us? The one that was the equivalent of one Happy Meal per week for a year? And he told us all to spend it, not save it?
Dude... That was a stimulus program cloaked in a PR package called a tax "rebate" to make all you tax-averse fools think you were getting what you wanted.
Recent Comments