That is a joke. To fix a bridge you buy concrete, rebar and tons of other things . You have to have trucks and heavy equipment. A small part of the cost of building a bridge is labor. You actually have to count the jobs preserved too. There is office help that got more hours . There are new supervisors and of course still employed older ones. There are restaurants and bars that got the workers to eat there. There is so much more. But dividing the stimulus package into jobs created is dishonest.
:dubious: Won’t people spend more of a large sum?
I know I would, but it’s my understanding that experience has shown that people are more likely to save the money when it comes as a lump sum.
He should let his advisors know, because I got an e-mail from Mitch Stewart saying exactly that: that Obama’s stimulus bill has reversed the recession. Had a graph and everything.
Money saved goes right back into the economy, too. People don’t actually save money in mattresses.
The recession is officially over, and the economy is growing. But stating those facts is a lot different from saying that everything is wonderful now. Which they’ve never said. Evidence: it isn’t all over Fox News.
Lot’s of people are putting money into T-bills, and banks are using money to play pat-a-cake with exotic investments again. Despite the increase in savings we aren’t out of the credit crunch yet.
You’re also not offsetting the jobs lost. So what if XX number of jobs were created. How many were lost. And you have to go by wages, not jobs.
One 100,000 a year job is equal to 6.8 $7.00 jobs.
The recession is defined so anyone can say what they want about, it’s clearly not over, despite what anyone says on paper.
That’s like breaking a leg and saying, now that your leg is in a cast and set correctly it is no longer broken. Until it’s out of the cast and the bone is healed it’s broken.
Job losses mean nothing, because there is only so much to cut. There’s only so many jobs that can be cut eventually it stops. City services in Chicago were drastically lost but no jobs were cut, they simply give you less hours. That’s meaningless.
Look at the small business that were forced out of business when credit card companies cancelled lines of credit without any reason to do so. Why? To simply rein in their potential liability.
Unemployment is always much higher than stated, as people who fall off unemployment roles aren’t counted, and underemployed people working a few hours a month are still counted.
If there’s a stimulus, where is it? Perhaps in my area, Chicago, it’s just bad and no where else it is?
The bottom line is you need to count ONLY measureable results. You can’t say “without it” because that is an unknown quantity.
So to answer the OP question, stick to only known measureable quantities and compare like to like only. The you will get your answer
I think that the country’s confidence is much higher than it was between Sept 08-March 09, which is a factor that shouldn’t be underestimated. Even if the stimulus package didn’t create a single job, the elimination of the panic and uncertainty of that period makes it a success imho.
Wrong.
False.
Untrue.
Incorrect.
This particular bit of nonsense is trotted out like a little retarded pony in every single thread about unemployment figures. It’s wrong every single time.
How are the unemployed counted if they fall off the unemployment roll?
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ FAQ:
New unemployment claims are released before the findings of the monthly survey, and those new claims are often used to estimate the employment situation. But they are not official numbers and never have been. The bias in the sample is too great, because that wouldn’t count people who never applied for benefits, and it wouldn’t count people whose benefits have run out. That’s simply an unacceptable level of error, and so the official numbers use a large statistical survey.
There is, of course, a margin of error involved. Macroeconomic numbers are never perfect. And Markxxx is right, at least, that part-time workers aren’t included in the official rate. But then again, they never have been included. The U6 underemployment rate is the broadest measure of unemployment, and it does include part-time workers who want to work longer hours. But if we’re going to use the U6, we have to be consistent about it. It’s no use comparing the standard rate during a healthy economy with the U6 during a recession, and yet that’s exactly what people tend to do when they’re claiming that the official numbers are no good.
I happen to really like the U6. It gives a nice bit of additional information, helps paint a broader picture. But it’s not nearly as good when doing comparisons across time periods, because then you’re comparing two different numbers that are calculated much differently. The fact of the matter is that the standard rate went from under 5% to hitting 10%, and that’s plenty bad enough on its own when compared to past recessions. Since the Depression, the only worse recession we’ve had in those terms was in the early 80s, and that was partially because the Fed wanted to rein in inflation expectations. As soon as they loosened the money again, the economy recovered quickly. That is, most likely, not going to happen this time. The unemployment rate almost reached the peak in the 80s, and it will likely stay high much longer than it did in the 80s, which will mean that our labor force will be living with this miserable job situation for a long time.
Things are truly bad right now, and the official figures show that.
In terms of dollars that’s true, but in terms of its effect on the economy I wholeheartedly disagree. Six $16,700 jobs instead of one $100K job mean six people, not one, have work, are producing, and aren’t on the dole.
And seconding Magiver. EVERY TIME someone claims that unemployment rates are based on the number of people receiving benefits - every time - it’s pointed out that this is totally false. Why does this keep popping up?
Hi, I think you wandered into the wrong thread. We’re talking about the US here. The US is currently involved in two overseas wars that have produced mountains of debt with no end in sight. I think we’ve pretty much tapped out the whole “war as stimulus” thing.
However, the “producing” aspect of those jobs is only meaningful if they produce something that other people want. Crazy as it seems, it is possible that “being on the dole” could be more efficient than having people build a bridge to nowhere.
This is the part of Paul Krugman’s wonky economics equations that are idiotic. He only counts employment numbers. He doesn’t count useful employment that produces desirable goods. Admittedly, this is a harder number to quantify.
If someone has a job, they’re producing something someone wants. Wasteful through government spending might be it’s not actually reached the point of burying jars full of money and digging them back up.
Sorry, when I said “want” , I was talking about “ROI” Return-On-Investment. Surely you’ve seen this usage of “want” before in economic discussion.
Sure, you can put a thousand people to work building a convention center in Detroit. And people like govt officials (mayor, governor), and the building contractor “want” that convention center. However, if the convention center doesn’t attract any business and turns out to be a white elephant, the ROI shows that that nobody really “wanted” it.
If we used your wide definition of “want”, we could trace all spending back to somebody somewhere who wanted it which causes the term “wasteful spending” to be meaningless.
This applies to a lot of the startups during the bubble also. Any investment is going to be risky, that doesn’t mean building something that doesn’t work out isn’t work.
Still, I still haven’t seen examples of stimulus project which are boondoggles. The one within walking distance of me involved fixing the street so my teeth don’t shake out of my mouth when I drive that stretch of road, and that pieces don’t fall off my car. Seems like a good investment to me.
It may have created them but if the unemployment rate didn’t change than the same number of people lost their job.
I don’t see a lot of jobs opening up in the private sector unless they are the result of a specific government project. In other words, we’re seeing a repeat of the WPA system as a method of job creation.
Any by extending that marveous principle of mathematics, without the stimulus TWICE as many people would have lost their jobs.
So what?