Jobs Wars - Part III: Revenge of the StimulusFollow

Really? So you're saying that Obama will *not* argue for spending on infrastructure as a means to create jobs? That's exactly the argument I'm taking issue with. My position is that such spending will not "create jobs" at all. It will, at best, move jobs from one place to another and will likely cost us more money than if we'd not done it in the first place.


Again, it's a good argument to say that it's worth the cost to spend money on infrastructure. But it's a bad argument to say we should spend that money because it will help our employment problems. It wont. It will make our employment problem worse.

Uh huh. Because of government policies that have made domestic employment less attractive. Chiefly among them has been massive overspending. Surely you can see how a plan involving yet more spending isn't going to help?



Then give them incentives to spend that money employing people. The solution is remarkably simple, but it doesn't involve bigger government, so you refuse to see it.



And once again we have a liberal reversing the order of money flow! How predictable.

We're not "putting infrastructure spending money into the private sector" Joph. What Obama will be proposing is the exact opposite: "Taking money from the private sector and spending it on infrastructure". Why do you liberals always have to lie when you talk about where the money is coming from and where it's going? You know damn well that the money is being sat upon in the private sector. You even said it two sentences ago. Yet, in an amazing display of subconscious indoctrination, you automatically reverse the direction. Do you honestly not realize when you do this?


Why not simply remove the things that are holding the private sector back and let them do what they do best? Isn't that a much better solution than creating conditions in which they are hesitant to invest in jobs, then blaming them for not investing in jobs, then using that as an excuse to take the money from them to create the jobs you want in a manner which is measurably less efficient than if you'd just not created those poor hiring conditions in the first place? I think so. It's just amazing to me that so many people buy this process and think it's perfectly ok.



Except that's incredibly short sighted. That money that the private sector is sitting on, is the wealth accumulated from saving up the profits from the fruits of the labors of their employers in the past. It's a one time commodity Joph. Once you seize it and spend it, it wont exist anymore. So once you've paid those infrastructure employees to work for a couple years and the money runs out, what then? Now unemployment will jump up again, and you wont have a tax base to draw on to keep spending more money on infrastructure jobs, and the private sector will have less money to invest in real productive jobs.


It's a mistake. Perhaps if we'd not frittered away so much money on liberal boondoogles with the first round of stimulus measures, $300B allocated the way Obama is likely to propose would be fine. But in the context of that earlier wasted spending, and the current debt situation, it's going to end out being good money following bad. At this point, the best thing to do is everything we can to get that private sector money invested directly into jobs. Not taken by the government, but jobs that will generate not only lower unemployment, and not only income for the workers, but also profits for the companies that employ them. That's the only way to create sustainable job growth.


Any other solution at this point is purely about temporarily treating the symptoms today at the cost of real economic recovery tomorrow. It was a bad idea to do this 2 years ago. It's a *really* bad idea to do it again today. If Obama comes out with that message tomorrow, it will be very very poorly received.

Doing what? Not investing money in domestic jobs? Then why was unemployment consistently averaging 5% or lower for the 3 years prior to the start of this current economic crisis? Clearly, the private sector was putting their money into things which resulted in employment for American workers.




I don't recall anyone complaining back in 2006/2007 that the reason our unemployment was so high was because the private sector was sitting on a couple trillion dollars which they could be investing in jobs. Do you?

I'd say that's strong evidence that the private sector has changed its behavior since Obama took office. Or, to be more fair, they've changed it since the economic downturn. But the point is that this is normal in an economic downturn. But what triggers a reversal of the downturn and starts recovery is when the private sector regains confidence in the market to generate profits for them and begin to reinvest and create jobs.


That hasn't happened yet. And that can absolutely squarely be blamed on the policies of the Obama administration. It's not like the private sectors motives and methodologies have magically changed in the last few years. They act on the same calculations and with the same objectives. What has changed are the conditions of the market. The reason they haven't invested in jobs is because they do not have confidence that the potential return on that investment will be worth while. That's what has changed. And when ask ourselves what might be making investment in the domestic job market less profitable, it's not really that hard to spot a few really really obvious answers.


What has changed? Identify those things, and that's why the job market hasn't recovered. And I'll give you a hint: The costs for wars didn't change. The tax rates didn't change. Look at what actually changed over that time frame in terms of economic policy and there's your answer.

Edited, Sep 7th 2011 6:33pm by gbaji

Letting the Bush tax cuts expire would reduce our countries deficit & debt by increasing revenues, which by your logic, may inspire private sector companies to be confident & reinvest in jobs.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...