Okay, I know you’ll be able to understand this if I go very explicit.
Thought Experiment:
We have 1 million jobs. And we’re losing 10 thousand a day. Okay?
Day 01: -10k
Day 02: -10k
Day 03: -10k
On day 4, we pass the stimulus.
Day 04: -9k
Day 05: -7k
Day 06: -5k
Day 07: -3k
Day 08: -1k
Day 09: +300
Day 10: +1k
and so on.
Are you following so far? Can you see that we’ve slowed down the losses due to the stimulus? Can you grasp that? Ok.
So now, what do we have? The unemployment level is higher than it was on Day 1. But the Stimulus still slowed the losses and eventually reversed them. So now, we aren’t losing, we’re gaining. Understand? Good!
I know this is at odds with the comfortable misinformation you want to believe, but this is reality. I’m sorry it stings.
It resulted in 3 million more jobs than if we did nothing.
It resulted in 3 million more jobs than if we did nothing.
It resulted in 3 million more jobs than if we did nothing.
Does that make sense? Okay, good!
If you wanted it to get all the jobs back, the stimulus would have to have been much bigger.
800 million equals 3 million jobs. So we could have doubled the stimulus and gotten some higher number. Make sense? Good!
It’s 800 billion with a B. And no, it doesn’t make sense. It was a waste of money trying to fix the damage caused by the health care bill that was handed to businesses.
Gingrich did not cut 15 trillion from Clinton’s proposed budgets. Please read and think about what I wrote before jumping in with talking points.
If one knew the first (well, maybe the second) thing about the budget process, one would recognize that the President is required by law to submit a budget to Congress. This is not a new thing – it is a legislative requirement since 1921.
Congress uses that as a starting point for budget deliberations, but let’s get real – the overwhelming amount of the President’s proposals are adopted (either by action or inaction) by Congress.
But let me ask you directly: how much money do you believe Gingrich cut from Clinton’s budget proposals? I’m not asking you for a precise figure, I just want a ballpark guess of how much spending Gingrich actually cut from those big spendin’ Democrat budgets which resulted in those surpluses.
Do you think he was responsible for $10 billion in cuts? $100 billion? $1 trillion? Just a rough guess of how much spending you think Gingrich eliminated from Clinton’s proposals in order to balance the budget.
You don’t even have your basic facts straight. The stimulus was passed 9 months before the health care bill.
And that waste of money has improved roads, fixed bridges, kept teachers from being fired, and a whole bunch of other things. It was not paying people to do nothing.
Now let’s start this next argument, since you jump around so that you don’t have to admit error, I thought it important to mark it as happening.
Paying people unemployment is good if they can’t find a job. But a job is better. The Stimulus projects are mostly done. But they pumped money into the economy, increased demand and made the private sector hire on permanent jobs.
I typoed million for billion, of course I knew the right number. Now back to showing you how utterly wrong you are about everything you think you know.
Please cite for me where the Affordable Care Act cost millions of jobs? Also cite how it was able to do this a year before it was written. Thank you.
You missed the absurdity of the expense involved in the net loss of jobs. We LOST jobs more jobs than gained. I put the best spin on it and showed how much the jobs associated with it cost. Put another way, we spent 800 billion dollars and achieved a net loss.
No. The net loss was happening. It wasn’t happening due to Obama. It was part of the economic downturn.
If the Stimulus wasn’t there, the net loss would be 3 million higher. Tattoo that backwards across your forehead and stare at the mirror for awhile.
We suffered an economic blow that would have left us with 3 million fewer jobs than we have today. That blow was softened by the Stimulus. As I said, if the stimulus was much larger it could have absorbed more of that blow. But it is complete nonsense to argue that it did nothing.
That fact that you are unable to understand this is genuinely scary. I’m feeling kind of uneasy arguing with you.
I understand $242,000 per person employed is poorly spent debt and that unemployment is stuck at around 9%.
The same lack of concern for how money spent can be seen in the Solyndra loan where, despite being told the company would fold WITH the loan, 500 million dollars was wasted on 4000 jobs that lasted less than a year. A bargain at $133,000 per job.
How many jobs wold you think we should get for $242,000?
You do understand we got bridges and highways and other infrastructure in addition to the payroll, right? There are no jobs, government or otherwise, that spend all the budget on payroll.
Changing the subject again. You are forgetting that the projects that were done under the Stimulus needed to be done anyway. They weren’t makework. They were funding, among other things roadwork and whatever. The money includes the materials and oversight.
You must think that your job only costs your employer your salary. You’re wrong about that too.
We would have had 3 million less jobs. It helped the economy. These are facts. Deny them at your leisure.
Boeing Aircraft did $65.73 billion dollars in revenue last year, and has 160,000 employees. That’s $409,532 per employee. Looks like the goverment is a better buy than private industry.
No I don’t understand that we got bridges and highways. We got hybrid buses that were ridiculously expensive. I live in a city with electric buses already. We’re not paying for them. Is your city paying for them? It was not a roads and bridges bill, it was a pork filled spend fest with no real structure to it.
to answer your question, if we gave a $6,000 tax break to businesses for 4 years to hire people then $242,000 would have provided jobs for 10 people. That would equate to 33 million people hired. That’s a more realistic return on investment.
Businesses don’t hire when demand is low. You own a widget factory. It has the capacity to make 100 widgets a day. Because of the economic downturn you can currently sell 50 widgets a day. So you lay off enough workforce so that you can make the 50 widgets.
Why would you hire anyone? You already make as many widgets as you can sell. This is basic stuff. Your idea is worthless.
