Stimulus Stuff

[says_bomb]

Talking Points Memo, quoted entirely because I agree with every word:
This week, out on the broad wastes of cable news drekdom and the uplands of Beltway journalistic drivel, a simple fact has gone almost entirely unreported: virtually everything congressional Republicans are saying about the Stimulus Bill wouldn't cut it in remedial economics. Not

Comments

[perich]

I'm not going to say Republican Congresspeople aren't ignorant buffoons, because, well, hey.

But lines like this:

recession economics or even how jobs come into existence

... and this ...

all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending.

... don't give me much hope for the author of this post, either.

[says_bomb]

I'm confused about what you find wrong with those statements. Are we understanding the same things about what he's actually criticizing and referencing there

[perich]

Republicans have out-and-out said things like "Government does not create jobs" and "government spending is not a stimulus."

I agree with both of those sentiments and I'm not a Republican.

Creating jobs - out of what, pixie dust and children's wishes? Why weren't those jobs available in the first place? I don't believe the U.S. employment market is a perfectly free market like we find in textbooks, allocating jobs to employers and wages to laborers with faultless efficiency. But I don't believe that companies are refusing to hire, or that new enterprises aren't starting up and demanding laborers, out of spite or laziness. I believe jobs aren't available because either the supply of capital or the demand for labor are low.

Running the money presses doesn't create capital, not in a legitimate sense. It waters down the value of all money currently existing, by inflating currency.

So government initiatives can "create" jobs only by destroying them elsewhere.

Government spending as a stimulus: the presumption that consuming

[says_bomb]

I'm sorry, I guess we are just very far apart in background here. But if that's the case, I'd request that you not respond to what I'm saying by talking past me

[perich]

Because saying "government does not create jobs" really is just asinine. Millions of people are directly employed by governments. Millions of people are directly employed due to contracts with governments. These are jobs.

I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is that it's an improvement. Would the tax revenue used to pay those employees have created more jobs in the private sector? Or would those private sector jobs have been more efficiently allocated?

But Keynesianism is still quite mainstream, so you'll have to forgive me for thinking you could at least consider it a fundamentally valid school of thought.

I know Keynesianism is mainstream. In the field of economic policy, the debate's largely between the Keynesians (fiscal policy drivers) and the Neoclassicals (monetary policy drivers). I don't like either of 'em.

I know this makes me a bit of a crank.

(And in your argument here, I'd like to make one point. You're ignoring the effects government spending on transportation, schools, and other infrastructure, that

[says_bomb]

I'm not disputing that. Then why did you lead by agreeing with it? I mean, I call the statement asinine exactly because it is intended to conceal--not reveal--an argument. It's willfully obtuse and designed just to make the other side mad and distract them from making their own case. Which is the point of the original post. Hence why I suggested you were talking past me