Quote:
Originally Posted by Riot
Most economists I've seen, and I'm being absolutely serious here, 'Zig, have said the stimulus absolutely helped, and we would have been in the second great depression without it. And that it should have been larger (why we are stuck now) In hindsight I've not seen any economist that said it didn't help.
|
You overstate this depression angle. I said that the stimulus wouldnt work last spring. Not because I am some economic genius but because a huge portion of the package wasn't really stimulus or at least wasn't very effective stimulus. The $20 billion for food stamps for example.
Look at it this way. A baseball team pays a free agent pitcher way more than he is worth (say $20 million a year) and he performs to his usual level(3 million a year). Did the player offer some value to the teams success at the end of the year? Sure, he was slightly better than average, but he didn't give the team the 20 million they paid him worth. The money could have been better spent. That was the stimulus package. It helped a little but not nearly as much as it could have had the money been directed more towards actual stimulus and less towards social programs disguised as stimulus.
When ANY dollar spent can be described as "good for the economy" it isn't hard to make the arguments that the left and Riot make. The problem is that it does matter where that money comes from.