By now, it’s clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.
What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives — action that’s swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.
Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
That’s why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come.
“..create..new jobs..” And how long will they last? Until the free money is gone?? I hope we will get some men doing some decent road and school repair. (Wells Fargo cancelled the nice Las Vegas mult-million vacation they planned for their CEO’s when a big negative ground swell developed from the hourly class). The company I worked years ago got smart. They set up a national remote TV com. system and had their CEO meeting for a fraction of a million dollars. And no one woke up next morning with an alcoholic hangover.
Harvey, that’s not how stimulus spending works. But stimulating the economy, the market then creates jobs on its own. Right now businesses and banks aren’t spending. When the government spends, banks and businesses begin to spend themselves.
But the ‘stimulus’ part of the package isn’t scheduled (under the current ‘porkus’ bill) to go into effect until 2010 at the EARLIEST.
That would be great, John, except that the government had to confiscate the money from somebody else in order to spend it. Therefore, those robbed have that much less to spend. There is no free lunch.
CBO is out today with an analysis that says this package will depress the GDP over 10 years versus do-nothing. That’s OK, though, have another glass of your Barry Obama Kool-Aid.
[blockquote] But stimulating the economy, the market then creates jobs on its own. Right now businesses and banks aren’t spending. When the government spends, banks and businesses begin to spend themselves.[/blockquote]
By “stimulating the economy,” what you really mean is printing money and handing it out to politically connected recipients. This means living standards for your children and children’s children will be that much lower, and produces malinvestments in the present which will be liquidated in their turn.
This is classic Keynesian demand-side hokum. Capital cannot be created out of thin air. It has to come from present production in the form of savings.
#4 – you’re right there is no such thing as a free lunch. Markets cost money to regulate. Business have benefited multiple times over from government spending. A government employed teacher buys a house, built by a private contractor. A business enjoys having roads that are repaired at government expense. A fortune 500 company can benefit from knowing that their employees won’t get stuck in traffic because of a good public transportation system. Businesses benefit from public spending.
I’m also not sure who is being “robbed.” Taxes aren’t being raised. Money is being shifted. what will happen is that those who have good products will be more liberated than they have bee. The “rich” aren’t spending; businesses aren’t spending, and bank aren’t loaning. Irrationally, they are holding on to their wealth, which will make it worse for them. It’s the problem of one person’s rational interest in the sort term harms themselves in the long term.
byzantine, “demand side hokum”? I don’t know where to begin: usually people create value (businesses) when there is a demand. I think you mean “supply side” hokum.
Keynsianism worked for about 40 years, making us the richest country on the planet. The issue is not that capital is being “created” out of thin air (although that is how this whole problem started: banks were inventing money that wasn’t there); it is fundamentally about creating demand.