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The Stimulus Worked
Not that I would know. But Martin A. Sullivan, now he’s convincing:
In the United Kingdom the government is led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. His government did not adopt stimulus. Instead it boldly enacted an economic program that cut spending and raised taxes. The chart below shows the results and compares it to the U.S. experience. After three and a half years, U.S. GDP is just about returning to the pre-recession peak. That’s awful. But it s far better than the U.K…
Via.
6 Responses to “The Stimulus Worked”
You want to know what really creeps me out about that graph? We are nearly at pre-recession GDP but with 9% unemployment and a slew of other bad “quality of life” indicators.
This tells me our economy is leaving the people behind. I find that horribly unsettling.
We ain’t out of the woods yet. What helps in the short term can cost dearly in the long term, and vice versa. The point that most detractors of the stimulus make, isn’t that it can’t make things feel better for the moment, but that it’s often better to take the pain up front, in order to fix the underlying problems, than to drag out the inevitable collapse.
It’s too early to declare victory.
The stimulus certainly did some good (and some bad), but compared to the job benefits promised by Obama it’s tough to say that it worked. You can’t make a blanket statement like “it worked” based on a comparison to the UK. There are too many other variables besides the stimulus.
Although I agree that the Obama administration promised a much rosier picture (8% unemployment instead of 8.5%), they also painted a much rosier “worst case scenario” picture. In addition, a huge quantity of job losses occurred during the time that Obama was in office 1.) during the first few months (when nothing he could have done would have stopped them) and 2.) in the PUBLIC sector at the state and local level (you know, the jobs that the Republicans want to cut like…teachers, police, fire, etc).
There will be no “victory” as long as the people Barky mentioned (who are really just the tip of the iceberg when you consider all the working lower middle-class, all the working poor and all those who have fallen between the cracks) are being left behind. Why isnt’ the media talking about these people? Story isn’t sexy enough? Too much of the MSM is next to useless.
Where is evidence, never mind proof, that the stimulus “worked”?
We’re still waiting for evidence of success, while being unhappy that we’ve observed the opposite.