Tweet
In the well….duh….department we find:
Stimulus for Clunkers
Subscription required and if you have one it is worth the read. A summary: It seems as though the cash-for-clunkers program generated, gasp, nothing much at all. Car purchases shifted to the months during which the bonanza was available, but “then it quickly hurt sales by about the same amount, in effect stealing purchases from the future.” :shock:
In short, we’ve spent billions and billions to no measurable benefit, an outcome expected by critics of Keynesian economics, who analogize fiscal-stimulus gambits to scooping water from one end of a lake and pouring it back into the other end. There’s no net gain, no mystical multiplier that raises the water level.
Oh the Left have oodles of excuses - the stimulus wasn’t big enough, the Republicans created uncertainty (I can’t begin to fathom how that one is supposed to make sense), and we should be appreciative that the economy hasn’t been much worse. The problem with all that is a lack of evidence. What we have is puddles of red ink, a limping economy, and high unemployment, which the Obama Administration now concedes will last a very long time. In private industry, a team that returned results like these would be fired en masse. In politics, the voters run the show and are likely to do just that.
Stimulus for Clunkers
Subscription required and if you have one it is worth the read. A summary: It seems as though the cash-for-clunkers program generated, gasp, nothing much at all. Car purchases shifted to the months during which the bonanza was available, but “then it quickly hurt sales by about the same amount, in effect stealing purchases from the future.” :shock:
In short, we’ve spent billions and billions to no measurable benefit, an outcome expected by critics of Keynesian economics, who analogize fiscal-stimulus gambits to scooping water from one end of a lake and pouring it back into the other end. There’s no net gain, no mystical multiplier that raises the water level.
Oh the Left have oodles of excuses - the stimulus wasn’t big enough, the Republicans created uncertainty (I can’t begin to fathom how that one is supposed to make sense), and we should be appreciative that the economy hasn’t been much worse. The problem with all that is a lack of evidence. What we have is puddles of red ink, a limping economy, and high unemployment, which the Obama Administration now concedes will last a very long time. In private industry, a team that returned results like these would be fired en masse. In politics, the voters run the show and are likely to do just that.
Comment