Obama’s stimulus plan gets an F

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Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.

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Great chart there!
People tend to forget that only a non-tax supported, goods-producing job creates more wealth.
Any tax-paid job has to first collect or suck wealth out of the economy before the person can get hired and paid.
Thus his/her job cannot be self-sustaining.
Yet look where goods-producing jobs rated when it came to getting ObamaMoney!
All he has done is kick the can of cutting back gov’t workers down the road a bit.

@Nan G:

Any job paid for by a government entity, whether it is direct pay, or grant-driven, not only DOES not, but CANNOT produce wealth. Instead, via waste and inefficiency, to pay a job such as that, the government MUST take in more than it pays out. In essence, they are wealth destroying jobs.

And due to that, an equal exchange of jobs, as in one government job for one private sector job, is not equal economically. Or, said another way, it takes a little more private sector job growth, than government job growth, for an economy to remain stable.

The “study” is ridiculous on its face. It shows a loss of jobs in the private sector. It does not show (or even imply) that the “stimulus” either destroyed or “forestalled” private sector jobs. It simply shows that private sector jobs declined in the period in question. Why did those jobs decline? Well, we were in the worst recession since the Great Depression. So we are back to arguing what it is which caused the Worst Recession. But the idea that the “stimulus” led to loss of private sector jobs is ridiculous.

With respect to how many jobs were either added or “saved” by the “stimulus,” the study authors admitted that they did not consider “spillover effects.” As one example: a teacher or police officer avoids a pink slip because of the massive assistance to state and local governments. Said public employee continues to purchase goods and services. This preserves private sector jobs. As another example, GM and Chysler don’t go out of business. Not only do their employees keep their jobs, but so do the vast number of workers in the auto parts supply industry.

This isn’t a serious study. It’s people with a political agenda trying to misuse statistics to make a political point.

There will, fortunately, be many more studies on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” the history of which has yet to be written.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

@OpenID

This isn’t a serious study. It’s people with a political agenda trying to misuse statistics to make a political point.

So are you saying it’s just like the kinds of statistically biased charts and polls Democrats in congress and the MSM are always throwing out to support their political positions?

(This is my shocked face) :-0