How do you know everybody thinks the Stimulus worked?
By Tom Toles
The election is over, so there is less need to go back and correct a lot of the politically-motivated nonsense that flooded the basement and first floor of public discourse. Less need, but still a little need, because some of these questions are still very much with us.
Over the last four years there was a lot of noise that resembled a herd of cattle meandering across a prairie mooing at each other. It was the chorus of people who said, on the basis of no economic analysis whatsoever that “Obama’s stimulus didn’t work.” The reasoning was that since unemployment was stubbornly high, that therefore “Obama’s stimulus didn’t work.” See also: Firefighters are battling a raging inferno and after a few moments of careful consideration declare: “Firefighters’ water doesn’t work.” A slightly more considered look at the question would compare the US GDP since the 2008 collapse to that of Europe, where the Anti-stimulus Austerity Model has been deployed in it’s full grinding glory. The Auster-Hungry Empire.
But another way to gauge EVERYONE’S secret belief in the power of stimulus is simply to listen to them squawking the Squawk of the Truly Alarmed about the Fiscal Cliff. What is the Fiscal Cliff? It is, just about precisely, Stimulus in Reverse. And what will it do to the economy? Wreck it, says everyone. The defense rests. Case dismissed. The cows shuffle out of the courtroom and meander back to their prairie, to continue their mooing exactly as before.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/how-do-you-know-everybody-thinks-the-stimulus-worked/2012/12/11/98a08f68-43ca-11e2-8e70-e1993528222d_blog.html
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