Pirate's Cove

With the mid-term elections fast approaching, and the blood-bath that should occur, the Credentialed Media is doing all they can to prop Obama and the Democrats up, especially regarding the economy. They try pithy things like

Economists agree: Stimulus created nearly 3 million jobs

in order to show that Democrats have actually Done Something. Of course, they forget the part where the economy is still in the tank, and is backsliding after some gains. They forget that Democrats wasted 8 months whining about ObamaCare, and really have no clue what to do, outside their little Keynesian box. They haven’t forgotten that the economy is the #1 most important issue for the American People, who feel that Obama and the Dems have done a terrible job. Expect more and more stories like this as we head towards November

Amid mounting signs that the economic recovery is faltering, one potential remedy seems out of the question: a booster shot of government spending.

The White House says the multiyear $814 billion stimulus program passed by Congress in 2009 boosted employment by 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs and raised the nation’s annual economic output by almost $400 billion. A recent study by two prominent economists generally agrees, crediting the pump-priming with averting “what could gave been called Great Depression 2.0.”

Eighteen months later, the consensus among economists is that the stimulus worked in staving off a rerun of the 1930s…..

Wow, two! Hallelujah, we have a consensus!

Tell you what, since it is Monday, let’s be charitable, and give Barry 3 million saved or created. Consider: stimulus mostly went to government of all levels, and kept government workers, including teachers, police officers, and firemen, working. For a year. It kept a whole bunch of people building and repairing roads, painting bridges, and standing around holding stop/slow signs. For the length of the project. It employed people to go knock on doors and ask how many people lived there. For a few months. So, sure, let’s say 3 million. 3 million saved and then lost again.

But, wait a moment, what’s this?

It’s impossible to determine precisely how many jobs or how much growth the stimulus program caused. In a nearly $14 trillion economy, economists can’t go employer to employer counting new hires. And there are too many moving parts to confidently link any single factor with individual hiring decisions. Roughly one-third of the stimulus, for example, came in the form of tax cuts, which are designed to boost demand for a wide array of products and eventually result in related hiring.

So, they make it up using computer models and such. As far as the tax cuts, like the jobs created/saved, they were short term measures, and their impact was the same: short term. Consumer confidence is down, people are not spending, and, heck, they are even holding off on getting pregnant.

So, after a $787 billion boondoggle, what is the answer? Of course, these same economists and people in the media want more government spending, to supplement the spending that didn’t work in the long term. And that’s where it matters, the long term.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU