The Stimulus Seems to have failed

BeAChooser said:
Yes I suppose that is, Piggy. But what is it they say? Ignorance is bliss?
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Yeah, but what if you thought you were ignorant of something, then when you went to look, it turned out that this something never existed, so there was nothing to be ignorant of. Now, here you are, being all blissful in your ignorance, then it turns out you weren't ignorant after all, so your bliss has been an illusion, and you were miserable all along but didn't know it, only now you do.

So I'm not going to risk it by going back over this thread in search of links which you offered to provide but don't need to because you've already done it, because if I do then I could end up with nothing to be ignorant about, which would end this bliss I'm currently enjoying.
 
Piggy said:
So I'm not going to risk it by going back over this thread in search of links which you offered to provide but don't need to because you've already done it
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I will give you a clue: 1837, 1893, 1921, 1815, 1873, 1929, 1958 and 1980. What happened in those years was thoroughly discussed earlier in this thread. And those discussions proved my point. Beyond that, I'm not going to feed your laziness, Piggy. Because you aren't really worth the effort and you show no real interest in either facts or the truth. :)
 
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/566096/201103151855/The-White-House-Disengages.htm

[3/15/11]

The president plans new spending of $8.7 trillion, which would add over $7 trillion to the national debt during the coming decade. At more than three-fourths of the entire U.S. economy, this spending comes to nearly twice the debt that plagued us before the recession.

Yet as the federal government goes deeper into debt but keeps expanding, we have a president using the bully pulpit to generate enthusiasm for Washington bureaucrats supervising kids' elementary school recess. Instead of videotaping basketball picks, why isn't Obama working hard to find common ground with House Republicans as they craft proposals for the fundamental reform of Medicare and Medicaid?
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I think I've already answered that. He's Stuck On Stupid. He's a deer in the headlights. He is in way over his head at this point.
 
BeAChooser said:
I will give you a clue: 1837, 1893, 1921, 1815, 1873, 1929, 1958 and 1980. What happened in those years was thoroughly discussed earlier in this thread.
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In particular we discussed the huge stimulus applied in 1980 (2X the recent stimulus in today dollars) and the lack of stimulus applied in 1929 combined with misguilded attemts to ballance the budget that caused the Greate Depression in the US to be amoung the mos serious in the world.

We also discussed how countries that did enact stimulus plans and get off the gold standard early recovered quickly in the early 1930's.

BaC of course had no answers for any of these facts and apparently is now inventing his own personal facts.
 
lomiller said:
In particular we discussed the huge stimulus applied in 1980 (2X the recent stimulus in today dollars)
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You continue to lie and deceive, lomiller.

What you call stimulus in the 81/82 recession consisted almost entirely of tax cuts, as Malerin pointed out to you in post #181. So I didn't need to respond to you. My side of this debate agrees that tax cuts are good. And the 81 recession proved it. Your side is the one arguing that tax INCREASES and EXTRA SPENDING are good … are what we needed to recover. And there we part company. And so does history. Malerin also listed a bunch of other reasons why your claim about the *stimulus* in 81 being similar in nature and bigger to what Obama has done is completely bogus. But you basically ignored him. So stop lying, lomiller. Stop acting like you know anything about economics or history. You're embarrassing yourself with these repeated lies and distortions (I can probably list at least half a dozen on this thread so far). You are giving lurkers the wrong idea about this forum.

lomiller said:
and the lack of stimulus applied in 1929 combined with misguilded attemts to ballance the budget that caused the Greate Depression in the US to be amoung the mos serious in the world.
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LIAR. You keep repeating this lie. And when confonted with the facts you keep running only to pop up again like weasel and repeat the lie. Here (and notice in this post I mentioned there were times before that when you had been told/shown that what you claim is false):

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6140352&postcount=341

lomiller said:
The US economy went into recession in 1929 and the President at the time reacted with a policy of no government stimulus and a misguided attempt to balancer the budget.
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LOL! I can only infer that you are one of the millions of gullible democrats who hang on every word coming out of that partisan, moron named Rachel Maddow.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-c...l-maddow-still-cant-get-it-right-about-hoover

Here she goes again, this time during her show Friday night while condemning Republicans calling for a "freeze" on federal spending for the rest of the fiscal year --

You know who else had the excellent idea to freeze government spending during a recession? This guy! (holds up photo of Hoover) H.H., President Herbert Hoover. His fundamental misunderstanding of how to shore up a failing economy was so celebrated that the great armies of homeless and jobless Americans gave him naming rights for the shanty towns where they all lived in cardboard boxes and burned-out cars during the Great Depression -- Hoovervilles. Hoovervilles.
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The problem is that Hoover didn't freeze spending. Either Maddow's a fool or a liar. Here, from the same source:

When it comes to federal spending during Hoover's single term in office, 1929 to 1933, what actually happened? According to the Office of Budget and Management Web site, Table 1.1 (BAC - in http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/pdf/hist.pdf ), just the opposite of what Maddow repeatedly claims.

Federal spending increased $166 million in 1929, or 5 percent. In 1930, it rose by $193 million over the preceding year, at 6 percent. The pattern continued in 1931, with an increase of $257 million, nearly 8 percent. And for 1932, it rose a whopping 30 percent, by $1.08 billion. All told, federal spending increased 57 percent in this four-year period, according to the OMB.
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Since in previous debates with you, I told you that Hoover significantly increased government spending, one suspects you of now lying. I told you previously that Herbert Hoover started a trade war, increased government spending substantially and raised tax rates across the board. In fact, he increased the top rate on personal income taxes from 25% to 63%. He doubled estate taxes. And he raised corporate taxes by nearly 15%. And in doing so, he probably turned what would have been a recession into a 10 or 11 year depression. Why did you ignore all that?
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You are a shameless liar and an embarrassment to the forum, lomiller.

lomiller said:
BaC of course had no answers for any of these facts and apparently is now inventing his own personal facts.
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I won't even bother dignifying this with a response. You deserve none.
 
BeAChooser said:
You continue to lie and deceive, lomiller.

What you call stimulus in the 81/82 recession consisted almost entirely of tax cuts,
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Well, tax cuts are not quite as effective as other types of stimulus but this was a problem for the recent recession as well where ~1/2 the stimulus was in the form of tax cuts.

despite being less then optimal, however, tax cuts are still stimulus you you may want to reconsider your wild accusations and ad-hom attacks.
 
lomiller said:
where ~1/2 the stimulus was in the form of tax cuts
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You just can't help lying, can you? The stimulus plan that Obama and the democrats passed was not ~1/2 tax cuts. Here, politifact says this:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...wart-claims-stimulus-bill-one-third-tax-cuts/

The stimulus bill, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is meant to create jobs and boost the economy. It cost $787 billion, including $499 billion to fund new roads, hire teachers and generally keep people employed, and about $288 billion in tax breaks to individuals and businesses. ... snip ...

Simple math shows that Stewart is in the ballpark with his claim: $288 billion is a little more than 36 percent of the bill's overall cost. So, tax cuts -- at least the way they've been defined by the Obama administration -- make up for slightly more than one-third of the bill.
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And even that's high. Continuing from that article:

All told, the AMT fix in the stimulus will cost about $70 billion over 10 years, according to a bill summary published by the Senate Finance Committee. But many tax experts say the AMT fix should not be considered a tax cut. They say that, by extending the AMT fix every year, the government is basically maintaining the status quo.

Back in July, we spoke with a number of tax experts about the issue who all agreed that including the fix as part of the stimulus "tax cuts" is a stretch.

... snip ...

So, our tax experts are skeptical that the $70 billion AMT fix should be included in the stimulus bill's tax relief. That would bring down the cost of the tax cuts to about $218 billion. That means about 28 percent of the bill could be described as tax cuts
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But even a portion of that amount was not really a tax cut. It was a $500 increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which went to people who never paid much in the way of, if any, taxes. Many of them paid no taxes but received a check from the government. That's not a tax cut. That a welfare spending increase disguised as a tax cut.

The increase in the Child Tax Credit worked the same way. Many people who paid no taxes got a check from the government. That's not a tax cut, but a welfare spending increase.

Real tax cuts didn't come anywhere close to being half the stimulus. So stop lying, lomiller. You are only embarrassing yourself.
 
BeAChooser said:
http://20smoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/employ.png "Employment as % of Population"

Where's that recovery we keep hearing about?
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Well, let's take a look....

If that graph is accurate, then you can date the slide from either the high in the winter of '06-'07 or from the top of the roller-coaster drop at the start of '08, Bush's last year.

It bottoms out at the end of Obama's first year, then roughly flattens out at a slightly higher rate.

Since everyone expects jobs to lag in this recession, as they have, this is exactly what you'd expect to see from that indicator during the early stages of recovery.
 
Piggy said:
Well, let's take a look....

If that graph is accurate, then you can date the slide from either the high in the winter of '06-'07 or from the top of the roller-coaster drop at the start of '08, Bush's last year.

It bottoms out at the end of Obama's first year, then roughly flattens out at a slightly higher rate.

Since everyone expects jobs to lag in this recession, as they have, this is exactly what you'd expect to see from that indicator during the early stages of recovery.
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Also of interest is the fact it the sharp decline that starts in early 08 levels out in the middle of 09 exactly when stimulus money starts to flow.

This looks like another own goal from BaC as it's more proof the economy started to stabilize when the stimulus started to flow. It also supports the contention that the stimulus just wasn't large enough and had too much focus on tax cuts to really turn the economy around.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...on-through-2021/2011/03/18/ABnyUfq_story.html

March 18

President Obama’s budget plan would produce deficits of $9.5 trillion over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Friday – more than $2 trillion higher than White House estimates.

In its annual re-calculation of the president’s budget, the CBO concluded that Obama’s policies would cause the portion of the national debt held by outside investors to double during that period, rising to $20.8 trillion, or 87 percent of the nation’s annual economic output.
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And that's assuming you believe the CBO can predict much of anything with any degree of certainty. :rolleyes:
 
BeAChooser said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...on-through-2021/2011/03/18/ABnyUfq_story.html

March 18

President Obama’s budget plan would produce deficits of $9.5 trillion over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Friday – more than $2 trillion higher than White House estimates.

In its annual re-calculation of the president’s budget, the CBO concluded that Obama’s policies would cause the portion of the national debt held by outside investors to double during that period, rising to $20.8 trillion, or 87 percent of the nation’s annual economic output.
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And that's assuming you believe the CBO can predict much of anything with any degree of certainty.
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What does this have to do with the question of whether or not the stimulus succeeded in stemming the economic freefall that began in Bush's last year in office?
 
BeAChooser said:
How's that stimulus working out for you?
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Pretty good, actually.

We managed to squeak by with a very narrow profit margin in '09, did better in '10, and we're doing even better now.

The building down the road that lost all its tenants in '09 now has tenants and an extension is under construction.

The new subdivision down the road from where I live stopped construction with just sewer, streets, and lights in '09, and now there are several new $300,000+ houses there with residents.
 
The Stimulus Seems to have failed

Indeed.

The assumption that the spending of resources which we do not have (ie, printing money) can somehow improve economic conditions is ridiculous.

First real resources must be saved and produced before they can be spent.
 
Piggy said:
Pretty good, actually.

We managed to squeak by with a very narrow profit margin in '09, did better in '10, and we're doing even better now.

The building down the road that lost all its tenants in '09 now has tenants and an extension is under construction.

The new subdivision down the road from where I live stopped construction with just sewer, streets, and lights in '09, and now there are several new $300,000+ houses there with residents.
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Do you really want to try to use anecdotal evidence to prove your point?
 
Chris L said:
Do you really want to try to use anecdotal evidence to prove your point?
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I was just taking my cue from the post I was responding to, which picked one factoid seemingly at random and asserted that it was some sort of indication of the effectiveness of the stimulus without bothering to explain why or how that is so. Sauce for the goose, you know.
 
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