3 ms·
Austerity by the states and local governments has outstripped stimulus by the federal government. I find it hard to argue that 'we've thrown every Keynesian tri
by krschultz 15y ago
Austerity by the states and local governments has outstripped stimulus by the federal government. I find it hard to argue that 'we've thrown every Keynesian trick in the book at this recession', I would argue we haven't yet tried much Keynesian economics at all.
If you look at the job reports over the last year, more often than not the private sector was adding jobs while the government has been shedding jobs (first firing census workers - obviously that doesn't count, but then states and local governments contracting)
And you can make a fairly simple correlation between the winding down of the federal stimulus and the current feeling that we are going into a double dip.
I know you can look at this data and come to either conclusion (that we did a stimulus and we're not having a roaring economy now, or that we didn't do enough stimluus and we're not having a roaring economy now), and also that proving causation in economics is very hard, but I personally think that the economics show that the stimulus was too small while the politics show that the stimulus was too big.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoAusterity by the states and local governments has outstripped stimulus by the federal government. False. Total government spending (in $B): 2006 $4698 2007 $4926 2008 $5335 2009 $5896 http://usgovernmentspending.com/spend.php?span=usgs302&year=2007&view=1&expand=&expandC=&units=b&fy=fy12&local=s&state=US&pie=total#usgs302 http://usgovernmentspending.com/spend.php?span=usgs302&y... (State and local numbers for 2010 are not yet available.)
- Anechoic 15y agoYour numbers don't address his comment. The recession started in late 2007 and became apparent in late 2008. Efforts to address the recession (the Stimulus package) weren't implemented until 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestm...) so that's the baseline. To show his comment is false we need the spending numbers for 2010 and YTD 2011. The site doesn't have solid numbers yet, but the "guesstimate" for 2010 ($5,799) indicates that krschultz is right.
- krschultz 15y agoThat's a great point, thanks for looking it up I hadn't even thought of looking at it in pure dollar terms. I was actually talking about this: 'Government employment is now 1.9 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery, a drop of 430,000 jobs. In contrast, government employment rose by 1.1 percent (or 232,000 jobs) during the equivalent part of the last recovery.' Pretty much anytime government employment is going DOWN, it is hard to argue that the response has been in any way keynesian. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-makes-this-recovery-different-from-other-recoveries-government-for-one/2011/08/05/gIQAm6SYwI_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-mak...