{"id":339300,"date":"2010-02-19T10:00:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.36245"},"modified":"2010-02-19T11:42:15","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T16:42:15","slug":"can-anybody-explain-what-the-stimulus-actually-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/339300","title":{"rendered":"Can Anybody Explain What the Stimulus Actually Did?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Recovery Act was designed<\/a> to target economic production over job creation. Today quarterly GDP growth is 5.7%, and the unemployment rate is 9.7%. So, naturally, the stimulus being judged for its failure to create jobs rather than credited for boosting<\/a> economic production. Why?<\/p>\n

Ezra Klein<\/a> argues the administration has struggled to explain the stimulus because the stimulus’ purpose has been
\nshifting: it’s about production! no, infrastructure! no, jobs! demand!
\nand so forth. There are other reasons why the administration has slogged through economic PR…<\/p>\n

First, 10 percent unemployment would hurt any administration’s economic
\nmessage — period\/the end\/full stop. Second, first point notwithstanding, the
\nadministration badly underestimated the impact the recession would have
\non joblessness. The CEA warned in early 2009 that unemployment would
\nhover around 9 percent without<\/i> the stimulus; with the stimulus,
\nit passed 10 percent. This miscalculation hurt the White House last
\nyear by keeping them from calling for a
\nlarger, more job-oriented, stimulus, and it continues to plague the
\nadministration by undercutting its
\nauthority on job creation and the economy this year.<\/p>\n

Third even the new organizations considered objective and mainstream have struggled to explain the stimulus and its frustrations. I think the fine reporters at The Washington Post mislede<\/a> with sentences like this:<\/p>\n

The giant economic stimulus package enacted a year ago has helped
\nstabilize the economy but has not made much of a dent<\/i> in the nation’s
\nvast unemployment.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration is acknowledging that its program of spending
\ncuts and tax breaks has yet to ease joblessness<\/i>, and White House
\nofficials are increasingly engaged in shaping the details of new
\nlegislation to boost job creation.
\n \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess it depends what you understand by “made much of a dent” and
\n“yet to ease.” It doesn’t really matter who you listen to about the job
\ncreation numbers — the administration says about two million jobs
\n“created or saved,” others say much fewer, I think it’s at least hundreds of thousands<\/a> — but it’s clear the stimulus bill made a dent<\/i> in unemployment numbers and eased<\/i>
\nthe jobless rate. No, it obviously hasn’t stopped U1 from climbing to
\n10 percent. But how can we know that 10 percent is not a dented, or
\neased, unemployment figure? There is no parallel universe in which we
\ncan play out a no-stimulus (or Republican stimulus) scenario for the
\nlast twelve months. I know what WaPo is trying to say — and I think Alec MacGillis is a particularly great reporter — but even seemingly anodyne sentences like this make the stimulus appear to have been a total wash for jobs; yet I don’t know any nonpartisan sources who would agree with that interpretation.<\/p>\n

_____
Bonus: It keeping with the thesis of the articles, here’s credit where it due: WaPo<\/a> has a great graph of the stimulus’ shifting focus<\/p>\n

\"GR2010021800343.gif\"<\/span><\/p>\n



\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Recovery Act was designed to target economic production over job creation. Today quarterly GDP growth is 5.7%, and the unemployment rate is 9.7%. So, naturally, the stimulus being judged for its failure to create jobs rather than credited for boosting economic production. Why? Ezra Klein argues the administration has struggled to explain the stimulus […]<\/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-339300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339300","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=339300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}