Friday, October 29, 2010

Political Myth 4: The Stimulus Didn't Work

This week I leading up to the election am reposting this article, point by point.

Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

2 comments:

halifax said...

Given that all eight 'myths' are implicitly or explicitly critical of the Democratic Party and Mr. Obama, I assume that 'myth' number nine would be that both parties are composed of well-intentioned but fallible human beings, when the truth is that Republicans are venal, deceitful, vicious, and eat babies in their spare time, while Democrats are the closest thing to the second coming of JC that we are likely to see and would have already established the New Jerusalem if not for their evil and Satanic opponents.

And, I don't know what will happen on Tuesday (or in 2012), but don't be suprised if a Republican victory results in those who supported such candidates saying wacky things like, 'I'm so proud that we have taken our country back' (sentiments I remember hearing a mere two years ago from happy Dems).

Whit said...

Your reality is unproven.

The way it was determined that the stimulus saved or created any given number of jobs was that the administration's theory said that if they spent a certain amount of money, it would create a certain number of jobs. Then they figured out how much they spent, and how many jobs their theory said that would create or save. That is, it did work because they predicted it would work.

And of course, a little math demonstrates that even if jobs were created or saved (and I think those created or saved, if any, came at the cost of private sector jobs that were lost or not created)the cost per job, giving the administration the benefit of the doubt, is about $240K. Better to drop cash from airplanes.