Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Time to give up on politics?View that spending kills jobs gains traction, despite expert consensusFifty-five percent of respondents said cuts in government spending and taxes would be more effective at creating jobs than maintaining or increasing government spending.
The question is confusingly formulated, because economists usually think of tax cuts and spending increases as part of the same stimulus-based approach, not as opposing approaches. But at root, the results appear to indicate that most Americans think cutting spending, not increasing it, is more likely to create jobs.
But that's almost the opposite of what most experts--on both sides of the political divide--believe. "That wouldn't square with the way we normally think about economic activity in a depressed economy," Andrew Samwick, a former chief economist on President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, told The Lookout. When the economy suffers from a lack of demand, as it does now, Samwick explained, most economists think increasing spending is the more effective way to generate that demand and get things moving again.
Why has the opposite view begun to take hold? In part, Samwick argued, it's thanks to the efforts of congressional Republicans, who want budget cuts and lately have hammered home the view that government spending has stymied growth. "You have the Speaker of the House talking about job-killing government spending," said Samwick, now a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. "But they have not been tasked with making clear exactly how the government is killing jobs."
posted by Quiddity at 6/28/2011 01:41:00 PM
5 comments
Spending doesn't create jobs. Employers create jobs, and employers are in no mood to take chances with this out-of-control administration, and won't come out of hiding until the Obama administration is gone.
So no, cutting spending will not fix the economy. Increasing spending will not help either. There is nothing that Obama can do to help the economy other than to resign.
Obama completely blew his entire presidency right out of the gate with his seizure of the auto industry and his strong-armed takeover of the banks to gain control of the automaker bonds. He overthrew the rule of commercial law with his GM and Chrysler bond thefts and no one is going to hire or invest capital in the lawless environment his administration has created.
Hard to blame him. He did exactly what a community organizer does -- use thug tactics to attack wealthy institutions to gain concessions. Do it to a local bank branch, and you get a few extra mortgages in your neighborhood for people who can't pay for them. Do it as the President on a national level, and you crash the economy for your entire term.
Who would have imagined that someone with no executive experience would make a lousy Chief Executive.
There's no taking you seriously, jms. Your shtick consists entirely of shopworn Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck talking points. You're not even trying to be original. You're appropriating the words of a group of disingenuous right-wing blowhards untethered from reality and claiming them as your own. If you believe even one word of the talking points you spew here like vomit, you need to see a professional. Turn off the TV, step away from the radio, and admit you need help. The first step is the hardest.
Once again, I do not listen to talk radio. I do not have cable. I do not watch television news. I'm pretty much internet-only.
You tell me that I am coming to the same conclusions as those guys, so I guess I'm missing a bright career in conservative rabble-rousing by hanging out here and preaching to the irritated.
I find it baffling that people believe that showering money on unions and government somehow creates jobs. As if money is like water, where you pour it on the ground, jobs sprout like flowers. I would at least hope that there is some common understanding that government jobs are different from private sector jobs in that government jobs increase the deficit by requiring salaries to be paid by the government, while providing a fractional return in income taxes, while private sector jobs reduce the deficit by creating tax revenue without government paying salaries. Yet we had a stimulus -- a really big one, and all that happened was that the government created a lot of temporary jobs. When the money ran out. the temporary jobs went away, and all that was left was the debt.
I mean, why didn't it work? Liberals keep saying that it wasn't big enough, but why would a bigger stimulus have worked? Why wouldn't it have produced a larger version of the same failure?
Speaking of blowhards, DPT, you didn't say a damn thing. You didn't address a single point I made. The only thing you seem to have to say is that you don't like the fact that I seem to come to the same conclusions as the big heavyweights that you so despise.
Go ahead. Hand me my ass. Tear my arguments apart. But don't think that you're insulting me when you tell me I'm appropriating the words of people I don't even listen to. I read Reynolds, Fernandez, Hinderaker, Breitbart, Hanson and the blogs they link to. I'm sure that Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck read the same blogs, so it isn't surprising that I'm flying in the same sphere. Just like you guys clearly are all over Kos, Thinkprogress, Huffpost, etc, because you're pretty much in perfect sync with their talking points.
I liked Quiddity's recommendation of E.D. Kain. I don't always agree with him, but he's thoughtful. As is this site, sometimes, which is why it's part of my regular rotation of liberal sites that aren't relentlessly stupid, although this sort of nonsense gets tiring after a while.
But, like you, I persist for the greater good.
jms blithered, Why wouldn't it have produced a larger version of the same failure?
The relevant question isn't whether the stimulus we had "failed." The correct question is whether the stimulus improved the economy compared to what would have happened absent the stimulus, and if it did do something positive, whether it was worth the cost.
Go ahead. Hand me my ass. Tear my arguments apart.
Empirical data are clear on the point: the best way to increase demand is to increase government spending. Tax cuts are less efficient.
But, like you, I persist for the greater good.
Nah. You're just another freedom-despising apologist for sociopathic rent collectors.
I suppose I shouldn't get irritated when Quiddity deletes another one of my posts, because that's what liberals do when they lose an argument -- try and erase all evidence that the debate ever happened. It's called the memory hole, and it's sacred to liberals.
People have criticized me for occasionally posting as anonymous, but when I post as jms, my posts just get deleted.
So I'm back to posting as anonymous.
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