Time to Fire obama's "uniquely qualified" Economic Team (Rush Limbaugh, Iraq)

[SilverOne]

With China and other foreign countries starting to sell our treasuries and bonds due to the Fed printing money ( Quantive Easing) and when the value of the US dollar will be cheapened (loss of value) who are we going to borrow the money from to continue down this stimilus road. If we create it out of thin air (agian Quantive Easing) then the whole shebang blows up all at once. With the whole economy tanking, no jobs, no money, no way out. Slowly a new currency will have to be created and put into place the old currency trashed. By the way thru out history no paper currency has lasted longer than 40 years. The last US change was in 1971.

[ambient]

Originally Posted by sanrene

Everyone with any sense to them, now realizes the massive stimulus of obama and the dems has been an utter failure.

And pray tell...what would the unemployment rate be today if there had been zero action at all when things really started to fall apart back at the end of 2009? No stimulus, tax cuts, or federal aid of any kind. What would things look like today?

It's extremely naive and logically incorrect to reason that all past policy actions were unnecessary and have had no beneficial effect just because things are not good today and the economy has not fully recovered by now.

[sanrene]

Originally Posted by ambient

And pray tell...what would the unemployment rate be today if there had been zero stimulus at all and the government had just done nothing when things were starting to really fall apart back at the end of 2009?

It's extremely naive to think that the stimulus didn't do anything just because things are not good now. The stimulus was about keeping the economy from imploding and ending up in a much worse place; other policies and more time will be required for a full recovery.

The stimulus, according to biden and obama, should be creating about 500,000 jobs/month, should have kept UE under 8%, should have given a "immediate jolt" to the economy, should have created 4 million jobs.

They added $1+ trillion to the debt, taking that straight out of the private sector.

The wasted stimulus, along with the new taxes, regulation, fees of obamacare that will hammer business and individuals, the anti-business policy of obama, have created a "perfect storm" in the economy.

People are spending, business not hiring, no growth in jobs GDP, because of what they see in the future and what the dems have done in the past year.

[ambient]

Originally Posted by sanrene

The stimulus, according to biden and obama, should be creating about 500,000 jobs/month, should have kept UE under 8%, should have given a "immediate jolt" to the economy, should have created 4 million jobs.

They added $1+ trillion to the debt, taking that straight out of the private sector.

The wasted stimulus, along with the new taxes, regulation, fees of obamacare that will hammer business and individuals, the anti-business policy of obama, have created a "perfect storm" in the economy.

People are spending, business not hiring, no growth in jobs GDP, because of what they see in the future and what the dems have done in the past year.

In that case, Obama and Biden were wrong. They were overly optimistic.

But guess what? It doesn't matter. Your logic is still faulty.

If you want to have a serious discussion about the effectiveness of the stimulus/tax cuts/etc., you should not be focusing on where unemployment and economic growth is today relative to a full recovery; your theoretical measure should be what unemployment and economic growth would look like today had no actions been taken. That's not the same thing. The former measures the situation relative to the final desired target; the latter correctly measures it relative to the theoretical opportunity cost of the policies enacted. Opportunity cost is what you really want to get at.

If you can construct a good argument that unemployment would have been at current levels or lower in absence of the stimulus, then I would be inclined to agree that stimulus/tax cuts/federal aid of all kinds has been a failure.

If, on the other hand, a good argument can be made that unemployment would have been significantly higher in absence of the stimulus, then I would have to say that stimulus/tax cuts/federal aid did in fact play a useful role, even though they unfortunately have not been able to bring us to full recovery.

I suspect that the truth is somewhere in the middle (as I believe it usually tends to be): the policies have had some important beneficial and necessary effects, helping us avoid the worst catastrophic scenario. But they have also been mismanaged and have not proven as effective as the president naively promised.

Unfortunately, most people on both sides of the aisle seem not to want to think clearly and have a proper, theoretically well-grounded discussion about this topic; they just want to point to the current unemployment rate and repeat some convenient soundbites - else one might have to face the uncomfortable prospect of their party line logic not being 100% correct all the time.

[sanrene]

Originally Posted by ambient

If you can construct a good argument that unemployment would have been at current levels or lower in absence of the stimulus, then I would agree that stimulus/tax cuts/federal aid of all kinds has been a failure.

Gee, we've never had to do that before obama was in office, trying to prove something that is impossible, from both sides.

Can YOU prove that without the wasted $1 trillion of stimulus, things would have been much worse?

We've never had that kind of qualifier, ever before. The reason for it now is to try and blow some smoke to save obama and the dems behinds.

Remember, there were plenty of people, economists, posters, politicians, pundits that WARNED the administration of exactly, precisely what has HAPPENED.

[Winter_Sucks]

The only bad part of the stimulus was that it is 1/3 tax cuts. Everyone knows that tax cuts are not stimulating.

[Winter_Sucks]

Originally Posted by ambient

And pray tell...what would the unemployment rate be today if there had been zero action at all when things really started to fall apart back at the end of 2009? No stimulus, tax cuts, or federal aid of any kind. What would things look like today?

It's extremely naive and logically incorrect to reason that all past policy actions were unnecessary and have had no beneficial effect just because things are not good today and the economy has not fully recovered by now.

You're wasting your breath. They don't care. It's a talking point. The economy wasn't corrected overnight by the stimulus, so hence its a failure. Never mind how many jobs it saved and created, that doesn't matter to them. They don't come from the reality based community.

[sanrene]

Originally Posted by Winter_Sucks

The only bad part of the stimulus was that it is 1/3 tax cuts. Everyone knows that tax cuts are not stimulating.

Do yourself a favor. Bush tax cuts resulted in a decrease of the deficit 2004-2007.

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf (broken link)

Let me know if you need help interpreting it.

Tax cuts = increased revenue = decreased deficit.

[Winter_Sucks]

Originally Posted by sanrene

Do yourself a favor. Bush tax cuts resulted in a decrease of the deficit 2004-2007.

Extending all of the Bush tax cuts will increase the deficit by $3.7 trillion.

[sanrene]

Originally Posted by Winter_Sucks

You're wasting your breath. They don't care. It's a talking point. The economy wasn't corrected overnight by the stimulus, so hence its a failure. Never mind how many jobs it saved and created, that doesn't matter to them. They don't come from the reality based community.

It's been 18 months.