Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job

The Viking wrote:

Kate wrote: BTW - Do you know for a fact that unemployment would not have been higher if the stimulus had not been passed? You seem to be making that assertion. Are you saying that since unemployment is higher now, the stimulus bill had no effect? Maybe unemployment would be 15% if it had not passed. I don't know, so I'm asking the question.

Would we be worse off or better off without the stimulus?

:bash :bash :bash

And most likely we would have been better. Maybe unemployment would be at 8%? How do you know. the one thing you CAN prove is that we would be almost $1 trillion LESS in debt! You are like Obama throwing out random numbers as to 'what might have been'. You are asking to prove a negative. You can't. But it makes for great numbers for someone who screwed up, saying that 'we think' it would have been much worse. We can throw those out all day. If Bush hadn't lowered taxes, unemployment would have been 15%. If we hadn't attacked Iraq, then we would have had another 9/11. Those are all made up facts. obama should only use the numbers of jobs created, not the supposed saved ones, which, as I stated, there are dozens if not hundreds of stories wehre Obama said jobs were saved adn the companies said they were never in jeopardy anyway. So those 'saved' jobs are a total crock!

:bash

That's what I'm asking, Viking. Instead of just saying, as you and several other posters here have done, that the Stimulus Bill did nothing or made things worse, I'm asking if it actually had an impact.

From the report that your blogger linked:

IV. CONCLUSION
This report continues the Council of Economic Advisers’ assessment of the economic impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the response of the economy as of the first quarter of 2011.
The analysis indicates that the Recovery Act has played a significant role in the turnaround of the economy that has occurred over the past two years. Real GDP reached its low point in the second quarter of 2009 and has been growing solidly since then, in large part because of the tax cuts and spending increases included in the Act. Employment, after falling dramatically, began to grow again on a sustained basis through 2010. As of the first quarter of 2011, the report estimates that the Recovery Act raised employment by 2.4 to 3.6 million jobs relative to what it otherwise would have been.

Admittedly, it's a government report and they will spin it to their advantage, but the numbers are real. The actual GDP numbers are up over what was projected in 2008 before the first TARP.

Read it for yourself. Here's a link to the report - http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default ... report.pdf

:bash :bash :bash

Real GDP reached its low point in the second quarter of 2009 and has been growing solidly since then, in large part because of the tax cuts and spending increases included in the Act. Employment, after falling dramatically, began to grow again on a sustained basis through 2010.

You know your being suckered by a pom-pom girl when they use language like "growing solidly" and "sustained basis". Funny though they credit tax cuts for this growth.

Kate- is it your experience that the economy has been "growing solidly" and on a "sustained basis"? That's not what I see going on.

And the simple fact is that throwing a trillion dollars of borrowed money around will make things look better than it would have been....

UNTIL

The bills come due.

And the bills are now coming due.... by now they were praying for a booming economy, so where is it?

Were in worse shape for this to be sure.

No doubt it's not in the best interest of the nation to be borrowing money from the future, but the figures shown in that report indicate that we are better off than predicted. This seems to indicate that the stimulus actually worked and we are in better shape than if we had done nothing.

Is there a report that says differently?

The trouble with that report, from my perspective, is that there is no possible way that they could know what would have been if the stimulus hadn't happened. Kinda makes all the rest BS if there is no basis of comparison.

towermonkey wrote: The trouble with that report, from my perspective, is that there is no possible way that they could know what would have been if the stimulus hadn't happened. Kinda makes all the rest BS if there is no basis of comparison.

I have not searched for the report from 2008, when they made the projections, but I'll bet it's out there on the internetz. I seriously doubt the government would publish a report that referenced projections that were never made. It would be too easy for the press to fact check for its existence.

towermonkey wrote: The trouble with that report, from my perspective, is that there is no possible way that they could know what would have been if the stimulus hadn't happened. Kinda makes all the rest BS if there is no basis of comparison.

Same thing could be said about the Bush tax cuts and how the economy improved after theyt were implemented.

Kate wrote: I have not searched for the report from 2008, when they made the projections, but I'll bet it's out there on the internetz. I seriously doubt the government would publish a report that referenced projections that were never made. It would be too easy for the press to fact check for its existence.

I think you may be referring to the infamous January 2009 (just as Obama took office) report by Christina Romer. That is the one where it was projected the unemployment rate would not exceed 8% with the stimulus, and go just over 9% without the stimulus (Figure 1, page 5 of the first link below). That's the main source of the conservative talking point that Obama "promised" the stimulus would keep unemployment under 8%. Well, it was a projection, not a promise, and there were many footnotes on the last page explaining that projections can vary.

None the less, it was a terrible projection in retrospect. As it has turned out, the unemployment rate with the stimulus has been much worse than what they projected it to be without the stimulus. So what did we get for our $800 billion so far as jobs go (yes, we got infrastructure)? Well, the change in the unemployment rate did get reversed. We were losing jobs with the maximum rate of loss of -784,000 in Q1 2009 (Figure 3 page 9 of the second link). Since then the rate of job loss started to improve and it once again became positive at +15,000 in Q1 of 2010, and it has continued to improve since (+165,000 in Q1 of 2011). But as has been discussed, how much did the stimulus influence that? And was it worth the huge cost?

The problem is the rate of job increase is very weak and is just barely good enough to keep up with new people entering the job market, plus unemployed people trying to get back into the job market after having given up. Hence our unemployment rate has remained in the upper 9% range. And that's one major area (another being home sales/values) where I think the stimulus has failed.

In the 2009 projections, they talked about what the stimulus would do to the unemployment rate. But Obama's lastest report no longer even mentions the unemployment rate (just the quarterly change in employment). That is being very misleading, IMO.

Romer's projections:

http://otrans.3cdn.net/ee40602f9a7d8172b8_ozm6bt5oi.pdf

The lastest Obama administration report (already posted here a few times):

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/cea_7th_arra_report.pdf