Krugman points out that some of the potentially most effective aspects of the "stimulus" have now been cut out.
Specifically the amount of money to state governments, most of which are floundering, is cut. According to Krugman this is where the action is and its limitation will prove disastrous in the long run.
I would suspect most of us are not intimately knowledgeable about the stimulus to make peace with the deal. My sense of it is as simplistic as it gets. I compare the stimulus bill and its potential effect on the recession to the attempt to contain a massive oil spill in the middle of the ocean. You would get some containment but the work to contain it all might not be possible. The size and effort involved are key to the degree of success.
NYT: What the centrists have wrought
...the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan.
My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.
3 comments:
Will it work? It might be that the stimulus is like trying to get a dead economy going by shooting it up with heroin? ( it will only temporaily numb the pain) The problem might be far deeper then what any one time shot of Gov't $$ can fix. Millions will soon have nada no way to even buy bread let alone pay rent. It's that black and white I got news for u. The food banks are being emptied daily( bread lines). The BV$H admin. thought giving billions to the banks would some how solve this. Why? Did he think the same crowd that ruined the economy almost with one hand tied behind their back was going to now rescue it? NOT! As for Obamas approach I have a better idea. Take the 900 bil. and divide equally among the countries taxpayers ( about 200 mil.) of us. Expecting this money to do anything more then be pumped onto the beaches of the wealthy or to pay for more over priced firemen in Atlantic City ( where the aver. firemen starts at 67K with full benefits) is just dreaming. The Big Corps. and the Big Gov'ts will suck this money up like the Martian leader did to that atomic bomb in Mars attacks. They'll put it into their pipes and smoke it like hash and then laugh in all our faces! Stimulus this folks!
By your calculation I'd get about 4500. I could use it!! :)
Clearly the CEOs are clueless. GM is going to cut 5000 in order to reconfigure for a $15 billion bailout. This is obviously not the way to do it. How about cutting over-priced salaries and leveling out the wages so everyone stays on the job. These guys don't think country, employees, and economy first, they think how do I cram it down my jeans.
Yeah, to put it all in the simplest of terms, we are fucked.
Sorry to say yes but yes were fucked. Giving everyone of us $4K+ would immediately help. People could pay off some large bills maybe even buy something. But , in the end even such a stimulus won't work unless it creates jobs. GM taking 15 bil. of tax payer $$ and laying off 5K of it's workforce is obnoxious. They should put a thing in the bail-out that if u take Fed. taxpayer $$ you promise to NOT lay off anyone for 2 yrs. Other wise this money is just going to be given to the top people as bonuses or some other form of compensation. For what? For failing? The incentives are upside down from reality. We're just encouraging bad behavior. Fail and we reward u. See how that works trying to train a dog to take a crap or a kid to do anything. It's just plain stupid.
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