Do you believe the stimulus plan kept us out of a deeper recession?

[kentuck]

That it would have been much worse if the stimulus had not been spent?

A former WH aide mentioned this on one of the earlier talk shows today on MSNBC. I don't recall his name off the top of my head. Jared ??

Do you think it would be much worse right now if the stimulus had not happened?

Isn't this a point that Democrats should be making?

[Kennah]

1. Yes

Although, Rick Perry would have been reduced to slashing and burning his budget, fucking Texans, if it weren't for the stimulus. Texans are better for it, but so too is Rick Perry's political future in Washington, D.C.

[ixion]

2. No. It made the DEPRESSION worse

[LonePirate]

4. How so?

[ixion]

11. because it was by and large a giveaway to the top 1%

and made the bill, which is still coming due, that much larger.

I'll save you responding to this: I'm sure you disagree, and I really don't care if you agree or not.

[Davis_X_Machina]

13. Well, you...

...did save me a trip to Free Republic, which is something, I guess.

[ixion]

16. ya know, it's funny

When i post here, I often get called a freeper troll (uhm, which is against DU rules). While I'm not a member of Free Republic, when I've posted on boards elsewhere I've been called a raging liberal.

I guess that means I'm on the right track, because ALL political hacks feel the need to attack me personally.

A few things that should tip you off that I'm not a freeper: I don't use all caps, I can spell, and I make complete sentences using proper grammar.

[Warren Stupidity]

23. actually that is mostly just no true.

the Great Recession first and foremost has been a Private Sector recession, and the initial stimulus did much to mitigate the effects of the huge decline in private sector economic activity. That stimulus effect is now wearing off, and quite unfortunately there is no offsetting growth in the private sector to compensate for the end of the stimulus. Quite the opposite, the private sector is not picking up the slack, and the idiots in washington are following the lead of the lunatics in the teabag besotted state legislatures and are hell bent on sacking government employees, reducing government spending across the board, and if they can fool enough of us, cutting entitlement programs we already paid for.

This Great Deficit Concern is Major Hogwash.

[ixion]

26. keep towing that status quo line

the cliff isn't far off now and then you can give it a rest.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1866477

When you pump trillions of dollars into the system, of course there will be some visible, quantifiable effect. The problems that caused the meltdown, however, remain present, hence the 'stimulus' did nothing to fix the problems.

[Warren Stupidity]

32. you keep revising your position.

your original statement was that it made the depression worse. Now you admit that of course the stimulus did have the obvious effect of filling in for the vast decline in the private sector, and instead you are off on some other Deficit Hawk tangent.

Has the stimulus fixed the structural problems in the global economy? No, nor was the stimulus intended to do that, in fact how could it? Structural problems are, well, structural, and require actual re-structuring to repair, and of course as the neo-lib consensus in washington doesn't do structural reform, we can't have any of that.

The stimulus did not make our problems worse. It made them less worse, as in it made things better. What we need, while we sort out our political problems that prevent us from actually dealing with the structural problems, is more stimulus so that people don't lose their houses, their jobs, their healthcare, their education, etc. We aren't going to get that. We are going to get more tax cuts for billionaires, wholesale sacking of federal employees to go along with the sacking of the state employees, benefit cuts, another round of private sector decline, and reduction in benefits from entitlement programs already paid for in order to put off making good on all those pesky obligations that have been piled up for 30 years. And the Deficit Concern Hawks will cheer this shit on, because apparently the very idea of borrowing more of our own money from ourselves is straight out of the question.

[ixion]

33. not a revision at all. There were peaks and troughs during the Great Depression, too

but just because there was a peak, didn't mean the depression was over. Such is the case now.

The stimulus did NOT fix the issue, hence did NOT fix the depression. But keep on talking rot. We'll be there soon enough.

[coalition_unwilling]

38. Best explanation of what happened I've read here at DU (or anywhere, for

that matter). I actually am forecasting a double-dip recession starting in Q1 2012 (meaning GDP will decline in two successive fiscal quarters, starting with Q1 2012). Certainly, your estimate of what is coming pretty much matches mine in all the essentials.

[hfojvt]

34. you seem to be confusing TARP with the stimulus

the latter was not by and large a giveaway to the top 1%

for one minor example, the making work pay credit was about $110 billion of a $700 billion stimulus and according to CTJ 47.2% of it went to the bottom 60% and only 1.4% of it went to the richest 5%, including 0% for the top 1%.
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxcompromise2010.pdf

[ixion]

37. No, the money wound up in the same place

even if it temporarily passed through the hands of the serfs.

[hedgehog]

3. yes

[phantom power]

5. Yes. But as we can see, that's not good enough.

[Botany]

6. yes

It is a republican/media talking point ...... "the stimulus has failed"

Mark Zandi ..... republican economist ..... the stimulus worked

[theoldman]

7. Yes, because that is how you work your way out of a recession.

The only problem was that it was not large enough. It slowed down the loss of jobs but was too small to create jobe. It is very difficult to get congress to vote on a good stimulus package when you are already drowning in debt from two wars.

[kentuck]

12. And another talking point they are never called on....

Republicans call it "a trillion dollar stimulus" plan. In fact, it totaled about $800 billion dollars and only about one-third went to job creation. One third went to taxcuts for working class. The other third went to state and local governments to keep policemen on the street and teachers and firemen on the job. The states could not afford them. Now that the stimulus has run its course, we are back at the same spot.

[Broderick]

8. no

It led to bigger compensation with the healthcare industry and led to failures.

[Little Star]

9. No. It was to small and not aimed enough at Main Street. n/t

[DJ13]

10. No, it slowed it down, but it was targeted at the wrong people to work

It stimulated the upper class and corporations (who still didnt hire), which was the wrong target in a consumption based recession.

It needed to be aimed more towards the lower classes to really stimulate spending (which creates demand, which increases the need for jobs).

[amborin]

14. it saved many imperiled jobs of people who would otherwise be unemployed; but it was woefully inadeq

uate and 40% of it was useless tax cuts

[lynne]

15. Wasn't it reported this week that a green job company supported by stimulus went bankrupt?

Uh, yeah, the news reports on this are just days old. I really don't think that's a point we want to make unless we can provide concrete evidence that the stimulus has been successful. If it has been successful, its sure not reached my neck of the woods.

Right now the evidence is that at least this stimulus-funded company has gone tits-up and everyone is about to lose their job. You really want to hear that played back at us time and time again?

http://www.baycitizen.org/jobs/story/solyndra-shutdown-stimulus-green-jobs/

[amborin]

20. that was a unique case...competition, sagging demand & unique manufacturing process that was $$$$ to

produce; don't think we can generalize from that

[roamer65]

17. No. It just stalled the onset of a depression.

[TheCowsCameHome]

18. yes

[SmileyRose]

19. Supposedly we averted disaster with the banking system.

But I don't think we'll know with surety for another 20 years.

I think we did though. Primarily because the vultures are still up to the same antics.

[FrenchieCat]

21. Yes...I believe it did!

The CBO does too!


New CBO Report Finds Up to 2.9 Million People Owe Their Jobs to the Recovery Act
August 30, 2011

n other words, between 1.0 million and 2.9 million people employed in June owed their jobs to the Recovery Act. This estimate, by Congress' non-partisan economic and budget analysts, is more comprehensive than the 550,000 jobs that ARRA recipients reported in July, CBO explains.

While the report focuses primarily on the second quarter of 2011, CBO also includes new projections of the Recovery Act's jobs impact through 2012. It finds that in the current quarter (the third quarter of 2011), there are 0.8 million to 2.5 million more people employed because of ARRA.
<>
In addition to saving and creating jobs, ARRA has increased the number of hours worked, CBO has concluded. That is, without ARRA, many full-time workers would have been reduced to part-time status and fewer would have worked overtime. The combination of the increase in jobs and the increase in hours means that ARRA boosted the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by between 1.4 million and 4.0 million as of June, the report estimates. CBO finds that this figure peaked in the third quarter of 2010, and stands at up to 3.4 million full-time equivalent jobs in the current quarter.
<>
CBO's analysis finds that ARRA has significantly boosted both the number of people employed and the number of hours worked. Without ARRA, millions more workers would be either unemployed or struggling to get by on less income.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3567&emailView=1

[ThomWV]

22. Although I think the stimulus was both too small and misdirected it did keep us out of a Depression

I do think the monetary system would have collapsed without it, but I also think it was too small to solve the problem, that it was misdirected (meaning the banks should indeed have been allowed to fail, but in an orderly fashion.

[MineralMan]

24. Yes. Without a doubt. nt

[johnaries]

25. Yes, but it's difficult to prove something that never happened. nt

[hfojvt]

35. I think the jobs picture from before and after are very telling

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/155

[trayfoot]

27. Yes I do!

[Imajika]

28. Yes..

The problem now is the stimulus is running out.

The original stimulus was not big enough, had a bunch of useless tax cuts in it and did not spur enough demand to really get the economy out of its slump.

[kentuck]

30. True..

Also, the Repubs have created a stigma on the very word, "stimulus". We still need a stimulus but we can't call it that and sell it to the public. Maybe we will have to call it "infrastructure"?

[Imajika]

31. Yup, your right...

Stimulus has become a dirty word. Yes, the Republicans helped put that stigma on it, but because it was not big enough and did not have the effect most Americans hoped for, they tend to see it as a failure. There is no doubt it saved millions of jobs and prevented the economy from sliding further downhill, but it's politically impossible to really make the argument of "hey, without the stimulus it would have been worse". I mean, it's just impossible to sell that.

We have already largely moved to calling it "infrastructure investment", so your right about that.

Either way, we need more stimulus. There is no other way around it. A lot more actually.

[doc03]

29. Yes but it wasn't big enough. It wasted money on tax cuts.

Today there is no such thing as shovel ready like you had back in the 30's. If you wanted to build a Hoover Dam today it would take at least 10 years of red tape before we broke ground. Same goes for just about any infrastructure project today. A company was going to build an amusement park that would employ over 1000 people directly near here and after 5 years they still don't have the permits, it looks like they have just dropped the whole project. Back in the 30's the government built several dams in this area, parks, even stone walls along some roads, nature trails etc. None of those could be built today without years of red tape.

[coalition_unwilling]

36. Of course. The data matches exactly what standard Keynesian theory

would predict. Earlier today, saw a study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that the stimulus had saved between some 1 to 3 million jobs that would have otherwise vanished.

To wit, prior to the stimulus bill, the economy was shedding 700,000 jobs per month on average. Following passage of the stimulus package, the hemorrhage in job losses stopped and the economy actualy started to add jobs, albeit at an anemic pace insufficient to keep up with growth in the labor force.

There's absolutely zero doubt in my mind that we were headed for 1933-level unemployment (can you say 25%?) absent the interventions represented by the stimulus plan and extensions to unemployment insurance.

Edit for typo in subject field :(