The sad cost of war

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

job losses continue. the deficit grows, which the stimulus added to. if we are five years from job GROWTH, and our deficit continues to increase, how can you feel any confidence right now based on those two things? a few road projects don't reduce the deficit. overall, i think our economy is further battered by all the added spending.

are a few jobs added here or there, when the overall true unemployment rate is over 16%, worth our growing deficit?

What should we do if we are five years from job growth? Just sit here and wait for it to happen? How will it happen if we are in a depression, or still in a recession?

Those "few" jobs here and there add up (the money is there to be spread over two years of it), and those jobs are sure important to the people that were unemployed two months ago, but have them now.

Is it your position that it would have been better to not spend that money, not improve our dangerously crumbling and outdated infrastructure (bridges collapsing on people, highway repairs, etc) and not hire those people?

Look at just the auto industry: what if, instead of stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc., the government did a complete hands off, and allowed the auto industry to fail?

Where would we be right now, six months later? Were would unemployement be? Would we be in a stabilizing recession, or would we have fallen off the cliff?

Clinton handed Bush a balanced, rapidly decreasing deficit, and Bush raised it to the highest deficit ever, and ignored a developing recession. Now we have to get out of it.

We are not in a place where hands off or cutting spending are really viable options at this time, and that's what most of the major economists have been saying all along.