Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The "Stimulus Money" Should Have Been Spent On, You Know, Like Actually Stimulating The Economy

"The Obama administration would like us to forget the promises it made about the U.S. employment outlook back in January when it was selling its massive $800 billion spending bill. Helped by his economic team, the president claimed that the stimulus would create around 3.5  million jobs, that the unemployment rate wouldn't go up beyond 8.25 percent, and and that, by the end of 2010, unemployment would have dropped to 7.25 percent.

"It's obviously not happening. In this piece for The American, I show that one of many reasons is that the stimulus funds are spent randomly and aren't targeting the states with higher unemployment. The chart below [found here] plots the number of jobs created for each 100,000 people in every state’s labor force and the corresponding unemployment rate in that state."

In other words, it's now clear that the stimulus money was never going to achieve what Obama claimed it would because it wasn't really designed to do the job.  So tell me again, just what did we get for that nearly $1 trillion in "stimulus" spending - other than more government?

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