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Monday, April 26, 2010
Stimulus No Help Say Some
A CNNMoney.com article claims that, "economists think the government's stimulus package and jobs bill had little to do with the rebound." This was very surprising to see for me as I had thought the economic community was in favor of, and encouraged by, the stimulus bill/plan. I read on, "NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act." How is that for some misleading journalism? Turns out the people surveyed were not "economists" perse, but only worked in economic jobs and were surveyed only about their own companies. Additionally, that means 27% were aided by the stimulus creating how many jobs? I think it will be a long time before we know the total tally on whether or not the bailouts and stimuluses worked, but this is, in my opinion, some really poor reporting on CNN's part. What are your thoughts?
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While I agree that this article may be confusing and illwritten I did some research and there are many people in the United States who share the sentiment of these "economists". The GOP has been speaking out again the government stimulus package and I found an interesting piece of information from CBS news here:
ReplyDelete"[The GOP says] the president's $787 billion stimulus package signed into law last year to create jobs has been ineffective. A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed to an administration report issued last year in which Romer and Jared Bernstein, an economic policy adviser for the vice president, wrote that without the stimulus package, unemployment would hit around 8.8 percent."
The full article can be read here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20001667-503544.html
68 people is a pretty small sample size for them to be basing this claim off of. We have no idea what the size of these private firms where these people people work are. I also have to agree with you Tommy that it will be years and years down the road until we could ever possibly accurately gauge the overall effects of these stimulus packages.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tommy and Noah that it will be a long time before the effects of the stimulus package can be assessed. I feel that there are a lot of political boundaries being drawn right now over influence of the stimulus package. The republicans are obviously going to say that the stimulus package is not working and the democrats will argue that the package is successful. It is entirely political rhetoric because there is still little data available to support either side.
ReplyDeleteThe effects cannot possibly be assessed yet. It is way too early!
ReplyDeleteI think that it did help but we won't be able to see how many jobs it actually created or didn't, that is pretty hard to calculate. I think that it helped individuals the most in the sense it help relieve some of the adverse effects and stop the bleeding.
ReplyDelete