CBO: Stimulus added up to 3.3 million jobs

Nice ready-made talking point for Obama to counter an inevitable criticism of his administration, the 2009 stimulus:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68965.html

 

Re: CBO: Stimulus added 3.3 million jobs

If Obama cured cervical cancer, the Republicans would accuse him of sexism for failing to cure prostate cancer.

 

Even if the number is 500,000, I think that's a pretty big difference from, "It was a failure that hurt the recovery."

 

Re: CBO: Stimulus added 3.3 million jobs

So what you are saying is that borrowing money and spending it created economic activity? That's not exactly news. When you borrow money and spend it, you have more stuff.

The issue is whether or not it was an efficient use of resources. $800 billion borrowed and spent means $800 million, plus interest taken out of the future economy. Would the future economy have put that money to better use?

500k to 3.3 million jobs at a cost of $0.8 trillion dollars is anywhere from $25k to $160k per job created. So whether or not this was an efficient use of resources is very much dependent on where in that rather large range that the real total falls into.

It's not as simple as "it created jobs!" or "it didn't!" Of course it did. But how many and for what cost?

 

I take some money out of your wallet. I bring you some groceries. Did you come out ahead on that deal? Well, it depends on what groceries I give you, how much money I took out, and what you planned on doing with that money.

Headline: DICK RECEIVES GROCERIES would not prove that you did or didn't come out ahead on the deal.

 

Ok, but how many of those jobs went to Mooslims? Answer that, you bolshevik traitors!!!11111!!!!

 

Yet, the unemployment rate is higher now than it was when he took office.

It's nice revisionist history just in time for the campaign.

 

Got your decimal place off there. It's $250K to $1.6M per job created. It's hard to spin that positively, unless you can somehow prove that those jobs are guaranteed to be around for the next ten years with no more stimulus.

 

Do you even understand what it is saying?

It is comparing jobs to the jobs that we would have without the stimulus. Not to the jobs at the time of the stimulus's enactment.

As Rick points out, we'd have to compare it to other alternatives to get a complete picture of its effectiveness.

But compared to doing nothing, it did not bring down employment. And that is what some GOPers have tried to say.

 

Also, Mizzou, why would the CBO participate in "revisionist history"? This data did not come out of the administration.

 

Does the impact include the widened freeways that help millions of Americans get home to their families faster every day?

I hope so.