New book shows that the stimulus worked - really, really well

[First]

And as usual Libs are always know-it-alls that refuse to look at anything that might shake their fragile exsistance.

here is a link they are hard to find bcause no "news" peeps dare cross Al Gore and well why should they hav already made up their mind. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

here are 9 major ones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute

An obscure, entirely unsourced article founded entirely by people that worked exclusively in 3 Republican HOR administrations, even writing a 45 page paper concluding GW isn't even real. Not credible. Frankly a completely lame attempt. Granted it's entirely irrelevant if Al Gore's film is accurate or not, as he has nothing to do with the thousands of scientifically conducted studies on GW.

Now, you going to back up and re-assert that bullshit claim of yours about GW not being real or perhaps the stimulus not being effective, or are you going to bitch out a 3rd time by making more wimpy partisan excuses about these "libs" you find so scary?

 

[Matt1970]

You're being a troll. This is MY thread, and the subject is: "The stimulus was very effective." And the book cited in the OP demonstrates that.

As much as you'd like the sidetrack and evade, the subject of this thread is NOT "Obama didn't accurately estimate the trajectory of the economy with and without the stimulus." Making that point says NOTHING about the effectiveness of the stimulus.

Now, either leave or stay on topic, you moron.

I am on topic you fuckin idiot. My graph shows the stimulus was very ineffective, atleast not what it was supposed to be.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Michael Grunwald is a liberal journalist...not an economist.

Most economists agree that porkulus was only marginally effective at best (if at all in the long run).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574385233867030644.html
The Stimulus Didn't Work

I also suggest you read "First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America's Prosperity" by John Taylor. John Taylor is an economist...not a reporter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Taylor).

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/02/news/economy/fed-stimulus-john-taylor.moneymag/index.htm
Why the Fed's stimulus 'didn't work'

 

[Lash444]

I am on topic you fuckin idiot. My graph shows the stimulus was very ineffective, atleast not what it was supposed to be.

Your graph doesn't prove anything.

The only thing that can be said about your graph is that actual unemployment was higher than the projected unemployment, and that it was off at predicting anything.

Your graph leaves out a very key piece of evidence. I would like for you to tell me what you think the current unemployment rate is for Q2 2012. By your own graph, could you please chart out the unemployment rate leading up to Q3 2012 from the last dot of May 2011?

Clearly the line for actual unemployment is much higher than the forecasted unemployment with or without stimulus. Now unless you are claiming that the stimulus in some way increased unemployment, we can only say that the graph incorrectly forecasted future unemployment. Nobody can say with any degree of accuracy that the stimulus did or did not work.

If that was possible, I would think that at the very least the actual unemployment rate should mirror the without stimulus line. All throught the graphing, especially nearing Q3 2012 the line for actual unemployment is way off from with/without. How can you use a graph as a piece of evidence that something doesn't work, if the very graph itself shows that they have no idea at all where unemployment will really be in the future?

I'm not saying the stimulus was successful or unsuccessful. What I am saying is that the only thing your graph shows is that the forecasting is complete bullshit. If you want to prove that the stimulus was "ineffective" then you need to have data that doesn't disprove itself as being valid.

 

[thraashman]

Michael Grunwald is a liberal journalist...not an economist.

Most economists agree that porkulus was only marginally effective at best (if at all in the long run).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574385233867030644.html
The Stimulus Didn't Work

I also suggest you read "First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America's Prosperity" by John Taylor. John Taylor is an economist...not a reporter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Taylor).

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/02/news/economy/fed-stimulus-john-taylor.moneymag/index.htm
Why the Fed's stimulus 'didn't work'

It's kinda hard to call John Taylor an unbiased source when he worked for both the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administration. And his own wikipedia page mentions that in Nov 2008 he recommended a stimulus even!

 

[werepossum]

Glad that's finally settled. There's a book, and everyone knows books can't be published unless they are true.

All you people pretending to be unemployed or to have lost homes and/or businesses, we're on to you bitches now.

 

[bfdd]

Such a good thing the economy is turning around.. lol nonsense. If the stimulus worked QE3 wouldn't be going on right now, article is nonsense and it should be obvious that most economists are idiot gamblers the rest of you take seriously.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

It's kinda hard to call John Taylor an unbiased source when he worked for both the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administration. And his own wikipedia page mentions that in Nov 2008 he recommended a stimulus even!

You forgot to say that he also worked under Carter. Also, stimulus is one thing and porkulus is quite another. He has been very outspoken against porkulus.

The 2009 Stimulus Package: Two Years Later
http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/2009-Stimulus-two-years-later.pdf

Stimulus Has Been a Washington Job Killer
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576600630985154132.html

And lastly, I find it interesting that you want frame Taylor as politically biased...yet have shown no concern that Grunwald is a highly partisan journalist and not an economist. As you gleaned through the Wikipedia article for minutia to disparage Taylor's credibility...did you notice that he's a citation laureate who is likely to be a future winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics?

Let's see...who's opinion do you value more...a highly partisan journalist (who has no formal training as an economist) or a highly respected economist that's likely to win the Nobel prize? Hmmm. I know...it's sad to say...but that's a really tough choice for some.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Here are 15 studies on the stimulus. John Taylor's opinion is in the extreme minority.

It worked (econometric):

Auerbach and Gorodnichenko

Chahrour, Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe

Chodorow-Reich, Feiveson, Liscow and Woolston

Clemens and Miran

Favero and Giavazzi

Feyrer and Sacerdote

Mertens and Ravn

Perotti

Wilson

It worked (modeling):

Congressional Budget Office

Council of Economic Advisers

Zandi and Blinder

It may have worked (econometric/modeling):

Oh and Reis

It didn’t work (econometric):

Conley and Dupor

Taylor

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...esnt-work-here-are-the-studies-they-left-out/

 

[Matt1970]

High unemployment 3 years later, millions underemployed, millions more not even looking for work, but all that is bullshit because someone who isn't even an economist wrote a book saying it worked.

 

[Darwin333]

The problem with your point is that you're ASSUMING that there was "something" that could have been done (and more importantly, something that was actually politically possible) that would have led to an economy significantly better than what we have now.

There was. Spend the entirety of the stimulus on a new modern grid.

 

[Darwin333]

both would have been much worse if the trajectory of the economy under Bush policies had continued. Which apparently is where Romney wants to go back to.

the leading cause of the increased debt isn't the stimulus, its the slow economy.

and as time goes on the Bush tax cuts will mushroom the debt to truly astronomical numbers.

Yet neither side is willing to allow the vast majority of those tax cuts to expire. Allowing the tax cuts for just the rich to expire will only get us about $36B a year which is hardly even a dent in our current deficit. So other than that $36B the rest of the tax cuts are as bipartisan as it gets, unless of course you can show me where either side wants to let them all expire.

 

[Budmantom]

This book was put out by White House publishing.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Here are 15 studies on the stimulus. John Taylor's opinion is in the extreme minority.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...esnt-work-here-are-the-studies-they-left-out/

That's odd...I didn't see Ramey on the list. Her work contradicts Auerbach and Gorodnichenko's conclusion of a 1.0 to 1.5 multiplier. Makes me wonder.

http://econ.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/NBER_Fiscal.pdf

Where's Garrett Jones & Daniel M. Rothschild?

http://mercatus.org/publication/no-such-thing-shovel-ready

Oh wait...hold the bus...this is a blog by Dylan Matthews, a known progressive...now I'm starting to understand why some of these names are missing.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

This book was put out by White House publishing.

Not.

 

[Tom]

Yet neither side is willing to allow the vast majority of those tax cuts to expire. Allowing the tax cuts for just the rich to expire will only get us about $36B a year which is hardly even a dent in our current deficit. So other than that $36B the rest of the tax cuts are as bipartisan as it gets, unless of course you can show me where either side wants to let them all expire.

The $36b "a year" isn't true. That's for the first year. Over 10 years its projected to be $950 billion, and it skyrockets after that.

That's about a quarter of the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that is the minimum goal of most efforts to cut the deficit.

And there's no reason not to do it, other than politics.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

That's odd...I didn't see Ramey on the list. Her work contradicts Auerbach and Gorodnichenko's conclusion of a 1.0 to 1.5 multiplier. Makes me wonder.

http://econ.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/NBER_Fiscal.pdf

And nevertheless reinforces government spending's positive effects on employment during recessions.

Where's Garrett Jones & Daniel M. Rothschild?

http://mercatus.org/publication/no-such-thing-shovel-ready

Oh wait...hold the bus...this is a blog by Dylan Matthews, a known progressive...now I'm starting to understand why some of these names are missing.

Anyone out of the GMU econ dept is automatically suspect, but subtitling your paper "The Supply Side of the Recovery Act" abandons any pretense of not simply pushing a political agenda. And that's not even really a study, it's (by their own admission) a statistically irrelevant survey interspersed with slanted commentary.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

And nevertheless reinforces government spending's positive effects on employment during recessions.

A multiplier below 1.0 is not so hot.

Conclusion

This paper has investigated the effects of government spending on private spending, unemployment, and employment. For the most part, it appears that a rise in government spending does not stimulate private spending; most estimates suggest that it significantly lowers private spending. These results imply that the government spending multiplier is below unity. Adjusting the implied multiplier for increases in tax rates has only a small effect. The results imply a multiplier on total GDP of around 0.5.

Increases in government spending do reduce unemployment. For all but one specification, though, it appears that all of the employment increase is from an increase in government employment, not private employment. The only exception is in the specification using the Fisher-Peters measure of defense news for the 1958 to 2008 period. This specification implies that a sustained increase in government spending has a robust positive effect on private employment. On balance, though, the results suggest that direct hiring of workers by the government may be more effective than relying on multiplier effects of government purchases.

Anyone out of the GMU econ dept is automatically suspect, but subtitling your paper "The Supply Side of the Recovery Act" abandons any pretense of not simply pushing a political agenda. And that's not even really a study, it's (by their own admission) a statistically irrelevant survey interspersed with slanted commentary.

So, it appears that you actually do care about the source of your information. You could have fooled me.

 

[hal2kilo]

And nevertheless reinforces government spending's positive effects on employment during recessions.



Anyone out of the GMU econ dept is automatically suspect, but subtitling your paper "The Supply Side of the Recovery Act" abandons any pretense of not simply pushing a political agenda. And that's not even really a study, it's (by their own admission) a statistically irrelevant survey interspersed with slanted commentary.

GMU econ dept definitely has an agenda.

 

[shira]

You forgot to say that he also worked under Carter. Also, stimulus is one thing and porkulus is quite another. He has been very outspoken against porkulus.

The 2009 Stimulus Package: Two Years Later
http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/2009-Stimulus-two-years-later.pdf

Stimulus Has Been a Washington Job Killer
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576600630985154132.html

And lastly, I find it interesting that you want frame Taylor as politically biased...yet have shown no concern that Grunwald is a highly partisan journalist and not an economist. As you gleaned through the Wikipedia article for minutia to disparage Taylor's credibility...did you notice that he's a citation laureate who is likely to be a future winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics?

Let's see...who's opinion do you value more...a highly partisan journalist (who has no formal training as an economist) or a highly respected economist that's likely to win the Nobel prize? Hmmm. I know...it's sad to say...but that's a really tough choice for some.

And Grunwald is a "highly partisan" "liberal journalist" why? Because his conclusions happen to be that the stimulus worked well? Your assumption seems to be that no objective statement can coincide with a liberal world view.

Furthermore, cherry-picking the views of a few economists, even highly regarded ones, in no way refutes the argument that a MAJORITY of economists think the stimulus worked well. You're smart enough to know that we can always find highly regarded naysayers.

Finally, who do YOU value more: someone who MAY win the Nobel prize or someone who actually DID win the Nobel prize and thinks we needed an even larger stimulus?

But let me hazard a wild guess: You don't value Paul Krugman.

That's the problem with cherry-picking; someone else can always find a bigger cherry.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

GMU econ dept definitely has an agenda.

No question about it and I'm talking from first-hand dealings.

 

[Fern]

That's really an argument for raising taxes, but do carry on...
-snip-

And what isn't to Progressives?

No matter, the stimulus wasn't going to be paid for by a tax increase. Thus 100% of it (and accompanying interest costs for decades) was always going straight to debt. So, had you understood my point you'd realize two things (1) that sudden, large, additional debt comes with potentially high costs that are long lasting according to economists, and (2) have such costs been considered by the author or is this the typical one-sided economic argument we typically see?

Fern

 

[Fern]

I think a major point typically overlooked in such discussions is how we define "worked well".

We should be asking did it work well for what it cost?

In any sort of real, or honest, appraisal of the stimulus that question must be addressed, and the costs of the increased debt taken into account. I see no evidence that supporters of the stimulus do so.

Fern

 

[werepossum]

I think a major point typically overlooked in such discussions is how we define "worked well".

We should be asking did it work well for what it cost?

In any sort of real, or honest, appraisal of the stimulus that question must be addressed, and the costs of the increased debt taken into account. I see evidence that supporters of the stimulus do so.

Fern

That is the crux of the issue. I think for what a stimulus can do well - stop the bleeding and give the private sector a chance to catch its breath without fear that demand drop will crush them if they don't get layoffs ahead of the drop in demand - the stimulus worked reasonably well. For actually fixing the economy, government stimulus just doesn't work, ever. The demand is artificial and lasts only as long as government keeps pumping in the money. Since part of the money confiscated inevitably gets burned in collecting and distributing, there's always a net loss to the economy. To a small extent that can be overcome by printing money in all its many forms, but with no new net increase in wealth production prices simply adjust to match the new supply versus cost curve. No free lunch.

 

[thraashman]

I think a major point typically overlooked in such discussions is how we define "worked well".

We should be asking did it work well for what it cost?

In any sort of real, or honest, appraisal of the stimulus that question must be addressed, and the costs of the increased debt taken into account. I see evidence that supporters of the stimulus do so.

Fern

Well here's some good questions that can be asked, and I'll even answer them.

Did the stimulus work in a yes or no context only? Yes.
Was the stimulus the most efficient version of a stimulus option? No.
Could the stimulus have been better? Yes.
Would the stimulus have been better had Republicans put aside partisanship and worked with Dems on it? Yes
Would not doing the stimulus have been worse? Yes
Would austerity attempted by Europe and championed by the GOP have worked? No.
Would the GOP be happier had the stimulus fared poorly and reflected badly on Obama, even at the cost of American well-being? Yes and they've even stated as much.
Would a larger stimulus have worked or second stimulus work better? Tough to say, risky to try.