Money "spent" in the case of Federal spending or grants is a reimbursement for spending that might have yet to take full effect. I pay up front for somebody to do a project, getting it actually done takes time. Even then, the multiplier takes time to operate. It's not instantaneous.
Some of the package was a concession to centrists -- the AMT fix, tax cuts -- and would not be expected to have much or any impact on jobs. Other concessions reduce the impact in other ways (the state aid was not well targeted to areas of greatest need).
As long as you have lots of good citizens who think debt is a problem, it's going to be hard to do good stimulus. The Administration deserves all the criticism it has gotten for failing to stick for a bigger, better effort.
Parenthetically, I'd like to note the millenarian faction on this list who thinks slinging 50-cent words in email is more useful than the sort of thing Jane or MoveOn does ought not be considered of the Left. I knew people like this in college -- they always had a good radical reason to justify NOT DOING SHIT.
Cheers.
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Yup. As Heidi pointed out, the Obama admin sold its StimPak by emphasizing that it was *not* an old-fashioned public works program, but one designed to create private sector jobs. If you take their numbers on job creation and stim money spent (from Recovery.gov), you
find that they've spent about $250,000 per job. Direct job creation would cost 1/4 or 1/5 as much.
> Doug and others say that job creation follows late as the economy
> improves.
That's not what I've said. In the classic business cycle, employment started growing almost immediately after the economy (measured by GDP
and such) bottomed. In the recoveries of the early 90s and 00s, the job market took about a year or more to get going. I'm expecting something like that again.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk