No it isn't - all it does is shift spending around. Money that could have been saved and spent later is being spent now in the hope that it'll create something

No it isn't - all it does is shift spending around. Money that could have been saved and spent later is being spent now in the hope that it'll create something of long term value that'll pay off more than invested. This is 'stimulation' in the same way that spiking yourself with coffee in the morning doesn't actually give you more energy in total, it just makes you feel more awake in the present at the expense of needing more recovery later. Is Uber such a case? Maybe if it ends up with a long term, world wide monopoly on self driving taxi networks. But right now it's ultimately just a taxi firm that's burning vast sums of money giving people cheap rides. It's literally just throwing pensions and university donations onto the street without any plan for how to get that money back.