Newt- Winning GOP nomination? I hope not

[Lanuven]

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[Loke]

Krugman may not have agreed with the stimulus package as it was, but he does agree with the highly questionable fundamental idea that the point of a stimulus is to increase aggregate demand, which in theory increases production. It is the rationale that the World Wars helped numerous nations out of depressions through massive government spending. Setting aside the questionability of what impact war spending had on economic recovery - the vital mistake I see us making is failing to recognize that the kind of spending they are talking about is only effective when put to productive use. Creating a job for the sake of employing someone, or producing a product for the sake of production (yes, that is worded awkwardly) does nothing if those goods and services are not produced to meet a demand that already exists in the market.

Sure, improving that highway might benefit the individuals that are employed to build it, and the people paying for it will have a nice new highway to use, but unless the utility that highway provides is higher than the costs of production, it doesn't make sense to build it. It is like people in Wisconsin complaining about us turning down $800 million in federal money to build a high speed rail. Because the money is coming from the government, they treat it like it is free and act like we turned down a free high speed rail. If that were the case I would agree - however, if a private company came in here and offered to build a high speed rail from Madison to Milwaukee for the low price of $800 million, I feel the average person would feel the utility they would receive from that train would not be worth spending that sort of money considering the cities are already connected directly by interstate, only a 70 minute drive and taking the bus is dirt cheap.

Stimulus plans will always fail because they are built upon flawed concepts.

[G13]

Originally Posted by Klath [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As I said before, the specific information I quoted included references. See those two links at the end of the text on the wiki page?

You're acting like Moody's is an innocent and credible source when they share large responsibility for the Financial crash of 2008. This is the same Moody's that attacked lawmakers who tried to reform CountryWide and Novastar and who gave CDOs and MBSs "money safe" ratings.

Because Moody's did this, the GSEs were allowed to expand worldwide and look for investors. They were able to entice investments because of the special rates they were afforded by the US Government, as well as guarantee that the investments would be covered by the Feds in case of a default. Nobody would have invested in these risky loans without Moody's giving them the green light to do so. Moody's also directly profited from this. It became big business. This is all documented here:

http://www.amazon.com/Reckless-Endan.../dp/0805091203

Chris Dodd also inserted an amendment into the Federal Deposit Corporation Improvement Act in 1991. The amendment extended federal bailout authorization to insurance companies and investment banks, including AIG, which just happened to be a constituent of Dodd's. Dodd was repaid with sweetheart loan deals.

If you’re going to include the reference to the ad from Cato then at least include the reference to the response:

“On February 8, 2009, a letter to Congress signed by about 200 economists in favor of the stimulus, written by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said that Obama's plan "proposes important investments that can start to overcome the nation's damaging loss of jobs," and would "put the United States back onto a sustainable long-term-growth path."[60] This letter was signed by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence R. Klein, Eric Maskin, Daniel McFadden, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. The general consensus among non-partisan economic sources including IHS Global Insight, Moody's.com, Economy.com and Macroeconomic Advisers is that the economy "could have been worse" without the ARRA.[“

Says it right there in the bottom the ad in big letters. It's your source. Why did you originally ignore it and pretend there wasn't any objection to Obama's Stimulus by mainstream economists.

That's a gross underestimate of the cost of the war (talk about a complete waste of time and money). I’ll even use a source from Cato:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13436

"Just to date the study has found that appropriations have been between $2.3 and 2.7 trillion; with an additional $884 to $1,334 billion already incurred for future costs for veterans and their families. This makes a total, incurred thus far, of from $3.2 Trillion to $4.0 trillion in inflation-controlled 2011 (constant) dollars through FY 2011. The final bill, going out to 2020 will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion."

The stimulus costs an average of more than 300K per "saved or created job". Is that money well spent in your opinion? Obama is running 1 - 1.5 trillion annual deficits for 3 years and counting.

You won't find any disagreement with me about the cost of the Iraq war. If we're going to use your premise and calculate all future potential costs that haven't been paid out yet though, then let's be fair. Obama's stimulus will cost much more in opportunity costs and interest than the original 787 billion dollar price tag. The price tag along over 10 years is more than 3 trillion. There is also a study by independent economists that claim that the Stimulus cost more than a million jobs in the private sector.

http://bx.businessweek.com/obamas-st...745%26f%3D9791

Let's also look at another one of Obama massive entitlement. Obamacare.

Setting aside the fact that Obama stole 500 billion from medicare in an effort to try and make his bloated bill look deficit neutral, the true cost could potentially be 6 trillion. If not more.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obama...op-6-trillion/

One can legitimately make the argument that the stimulus did not live up to expectations. It didn't. It was an imperfect bill that was diluted in order to get it to pass. And, to be fair, for a variety of the factors you've mentioned. However, we also didn’t get a picture of just how bad the recession was until this year.

There is no argument. It didn't even come close to Obama's projections and it damaged the economy in the long term. It will cost trillions of dollars and have accomplished very little. I've already outlined and provided many examples of the blatant fraud and abuse littered within it. Apparently a Wikipedia article has a section that claims otherwise, quoting keynesian economists and corrupt credit ratings agencies, so it must be true.

If you were expecting the stimulus to reverse deficit spending then obviously you're going to be disappointed. My hopes for the stimulus were that it would prevent a collapse of the economy into a depression or a prolonged recession. Many economists believe it did exactly that.

Which economists? I can cite hundreds who disagree who are far more credible than Krugman. ZERO jobs created in the month of August. Obama not counting people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months and stopped looking for work. These people could be digging in dumpsters and they aren't considered unemployed by the Obama Administration.

You've been brainwashed into believing that Government Spending creates wealth and prosperity. You need to go smack whichever ideologue filled your brain with such nonsense and demand your money back if you paid any tuition.

Tax rates are at near-historic lows and investors are doing pretty well. Companies are sitting on historic stockpiles of cash.

Why would anyone want to hand their money over to the Government so it can be flushed down the toilet? If you're to talk about tax rates then you need to include the 2.5% self-employment tax, Loss of deductions in the AMT brackets, historically high county property taxes, historically high state income taxes, historically high sales taxes, historically high individual health insurance costs for the self-employed, No 401k match or deductions for the self-employed and historically high college tuition.

Secondly the top 5% are responsible for 37% of all consumer spending. If you raise their taxes, especially during a recession, it's going to dramatically reduce consumer spending and lower GDP. Even Obama believes that raising taxes right now would be a bad idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aufAtuTwKlE

Almost 50% of the US population do not pay income taxes. On the contrary, they also benefit from wealth re-distribution in the form of tax subsidies. Obama has increased Government spending by 30% within 3 years, and is running annual trillion dollar + deficits. Even if you confiscated 100% of all the wealth of the rich, it wouldn't even come close to covering these deficits.

Those costs include the equipment and materials to carry out the job. Making a highway, for example, has a high cost in materials. When all is said and done you've not only employed someone, you have a better highway.

Only 6% of the Stimulus funds went towards Infrastructure Projects.

Employment and jobs market are lagging indicators which appear to be improving (slowly). If you look at leading indicators, the outlook is better.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index
http://www.conference-board.org/data...ntry.cfm?cid=1

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

“The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 8.6 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment rose by 120,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.” The rate hasn’t been that low since March 2009.

I've already outlined quite clearly how the Obama Administration came up with that phony 8.6% unemployment number many times within this thread, yet you are still disingenuously pandering the Obama Administration's numbers. 350K people LEAVING the work force completely offset those 120K mostly holiday retail jobs. The labor market is shrinking, yet you're claiming the market is improving? It doesn't pass the laugh test.

I see $527 million (with an M, not a B) next to Solyndra. Still, poor use of the money.

17.2 Billion in total Green Job investments allocated within the Stimulus at a cost of 3.5 million per "saved or created job".

Krugman wasn’t particularly happy with the stimulus bill and predicted that it wouldn't live up to expectations due to the way the money was apportioned. The parts of the stimulus that were most successful were the parts that Krugman pushed hardest for, like infrastructure spending. In any case, it's nothing but conjecture on the part of the Austrian Schoolers that their approach would have left us any better off.

Krugman claimed it wasn't big enough after it failed. Krugman also claimed this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_926995.html

[Klath]

Originally Posted by G13 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I've already outlined quite clearly how the Obama Administration came up with that phony 8.6% unemployment number many times within this thread, yet you are still disingenuously pandering the Obama Administration's numbers. 350K people LEAVING the work force completely offset those 120K mostly holiday retail jobs. The labor market is shrinking, yet you're claiming the market is improving? It doesn't pass the laugh test.

You are wrong. Here are the latest seasonally adjusted figures from the Department of Labor:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

Look at the U6 numbers.

If you'd like them for a longer period and with finer granularity, try here:

http://portalseven.com/employment/un...nt_rate_u6.jsp

The last time U6 (and U3) unemployment was this low was March 2009.

[loopholbrook]

WE NEED TO CHANGE THE NAME OF HOLOCAUST!

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bronson, you're way over my head with all that economics jibber jabber dude, I can't even pretend to keep up.

I do have a couple of honest, basic questions for you, and one observation about the first sentence in your last post. First the questions - mind you these are not meant to be snide or rhetorical, and I would appreciate it if you could use your education and knowledge to give me real answers, but please do dumb it down for the lay person:

Is it "A-OK" with you that millions of hard-working middle-class Americans are actually or very close to actually losing their retirements and homes, which they have spent their entire lives working for?
Is it "A-OK" with you that simultaneous to the above scenario, 2 huge stimulus packages went to bail out banks and auto companies to "stop them from going bankrupt," and came out of that deal with billions of dollars in profits, while we got basic low interest payments in return for it? They made huge profits off of the money we gave them which was just supposed to keep them afloat long enough that they could make their own money. Isn't there something wrong with that?
What does "7.7 trillion dollars" mean to you? Is that scandal true? Because those loans would make both stimuli packages seem like chump change, and nobody was ever consulted about it. Don't we have starving / sick / homeless / working poor / mentally ill people in this country that money could have helped? Don't we need to buy asphalt and better ways to create energy?
Do you think it's cool that we live in a system where I can go find a dumb person, have them sign a contract I know they won't be able to fulfill, and then make bets for them to default on the contract, making a huge profit where no service was provided? Shouldn't that kind of stuff be best left in vegas?
What about all of those people now being able to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians, ensuring that US policy reflects their interests?
Do you know what the tax rate on the richest bracket was in 1954? What else do you know about the achievements of this country during that era and the years immediately following? Weren't there rich people then regardless of their taxes? Wasn't that the era of Sinatra and the high life? What has happened to this country as tax rates on the rich have been eroded over time (hint: wealth concentration and disparity)?
Why were 23 million jobs created during the Clinton administration?

Now for an observation:

My observation is that just because you can't quantify something doesn't necessarily imply that it doesn't exist. For instance, if I asked you to quantify all the stars in the universe, you wouldn't be able to do that, because our understanding of the universe is limited. In the same vein, our understanding of how "saving jobs" works is limited.

Mind you, I'm definitely not defending Mr. Obama or agreeing with the empty rhetoric "created or saved X # of jobs," I'm just saying that concept can't be discounted out of hand simply because you don't have the proper metric to quantify it.

Carry on.

Please Bronson, I'm looking for actual insight from someone with your background, and not being snide.