$250,000 per Job? Only a little bit too expensive.

[howardtayler]

If you've been following the news, there are lots of people screaming about how incredibly expensive the stimulus package was, and how it didn't create enough jobs for the money spent

Comments

[raithnor]

People seem to forget that about 40% of the stimulus was tax cuts

[samholden]

The actors that caused this in the first place are Bush and Greenspan. And surprise surprise Bush and Bernanke, and Obama and Bernanke are doing the exact same thing.

The problem with kicking the recession down the road a bit is that each time you do it the recession down the road will be of larger magnitude and the next kick won't go as far.

This recession is really just the 2001-2003 recession that was kicked down the road via stimulus. And it looks like we kicked this one further down the road too, of course that just means we are in for a whopper in a few years time (way less than the 7 or so years we kicked the can last time).

Bush almost got away with kicking the can into the next president's term, Obama won't even get it into his next term (if he gets one).

[raithnor]

The problem with just "letting the recession happen" is fallout of letting the economy go down the toilet. Sure, we could have chosen not to spend any money, but we would have had twice the unemployment we had now. More people out of work meants more mortgage defaults and less people buying anything which feedsback on itself.

It didn't help that Bush and the Fed kept interest rates as low as they did, it was artifical and it was going to blow back into their face, which it did.

It also didn't help that the bubble didn't create anything of lasting value. Sure we have a bunch of houses, but no one is going to sell them at a loss, you'll eventually have blighted properties that will need to be demolished. At least when the tech bubble burst we had the Internet.

[kazriko]

If they had let all of the recessions from 1910 forward happen, then the current recession would be nothing but a blip. It's grown so large because we kept stomping down all the recessions symptoms and sweeping the problem under the rug so that the whole thing gets dirtier, crustier, and even worse the next time around. Bush as well as Clinton, Nixon, Carter, etc have all been kicking the can down the road and making it that much worse.

It's like the wildfires. If they would just control them near homes and let them burn, then it would renew the whole system and eliminate the dead wood. Instead they put them out and that just keeps accumulating and making an even bigger fire next time until we just don't have the resources to put it out and it eats EVERYTHING.

Recessions are the periodic small forest fires that renew the forest and eliminate the dying and dead companies to make room for new ones.

[rurounifalcon]

Taylor, it doesn't help that what Washington claims is not that they've created jobs, they claim that they kept the jobless rates from getting worse. 'Cause last I checked unemployment hasn't stopped going up yet. Further, they've got no solid evidence that the stimulus worked, and many economists claiming that long-run it'll make things worse, plus there's the FACT that the "stimulus bill" was in fact nothing more than a big pork-barrel spending bill oriented towards the special interest groups that support the President and his party.

I'm starting to think we need two major Constitutional amendments here. The first would be some form of balanced budget amendment. The second would force Congress to only deal with one topic per bill, and so prevent all these damnable riders and add-ons to major bills that either spend money or sneak in legislation that one group wants but would never past muster otherwise (the recent expansion of Federal hate crime laws via the Defense Spending Bill comes to mind).

[kazriko]

It's Tayler. ;)

Also, have you seen what they're sneaking into the medical bill? Regulations on everything from Vending machines to Firearms. It's the holy grail of progressive thought made into law.

[unixronin]

I'd add one more requirement to that second: Write the bills in plain English, dammit. Require all bills before Congress to be written in language that you do not have to be a lawyer to understand, so that the voters who elected you have a fair chance of understanding what you're voting for as their "representative".

I could also find arguments in favor of an amendment that empowers the voters of the states to recall their senators and congressmen from office if they act against the interest of the voters. "You voted for WHAT?!? ...You are SO fired."

[kazriko]

The downside to using plain language is the ease at which it can be interpreted in a way that wasn't intended. The same is true of the legalese used in bills. They claim it's one way and that they'll never use it the other, but 10-20 years down the road when everyone has forgotten the debate, they start using in the other way...