\nwith The Nation’s Chris Hayes, Bivens explains how we can measure the
\neffect of the stimulus on disposable income and, indirectly, to
\nconsumption, which makes up between 60 and 70 percent of our GDP. If
\nyou look at personal income minus government transfers<\/i> — this is a good
\nproxy for how the private sector is doing at generating income growth
\nwithout counting government assistance — that measure has fallen by 8
\npercent since the recession began. But disposable personal income<\/i> —
\nwhat people have the ability to actually spend, due to tax breaks and
\ngovernment transfer payments like unemployment insurance — is actually
\nup<\/i> one percent. One reason consumption hasn’t fallen off the cliff, he suggests, is that Recovery Act has extended billions of dollars of transfer payments and tax credits as the private sector suffered.<\/p>\n
Here<\/a>‘s the graph showing “the difference in year-over-year growth in personal income minus transfers versus disposable personal incomes<\/em>“:<\/p>\n \nThe problem with the stimulus, Blevins concludes, it that it might end The debate over the jobs bill revolves partly around the larger question: did the first stimulus work, or not? Briefly: I think it did a lot more good than bad, but defending it can be difficult. It probably added to GDP growth, but to prove that would require a counter-factual that we don’t know — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"[Figure](\"http:\/\/www.epi.org\/page\/-\/ib265\/ib265-figurec.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nto soon. In the second half of this year, the White House expects it to
\nadd almost nothing to GDP growth, just as unemployment is finally
\nfalling. That’s one reason why Blevins thinks that despite the Recovery
\nAct, we’re still in for a “long, ugly muddle.”
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