Well, it’s a sort of money-go-round. Even if Obama gave all the money to his family members, they’d then spend it in the marketplace. (But it’d be more efficient spending it on the right things to start with.)

Even most of the interest on the national debt is still paid to Americans, so it’s not this money will disappear.

And finally, those new Samsung TV’s look awesome eh? Obama should buy one for each American if Samsung sets up factories in the USA to produce them.

Damn that stupiid keynesian bullshit drives me crazy, it was a total failure and is becoming a complete disaster again.

If governemnt spending could grow the economy and the nation’s capitol stock, why even bother with free markets? — HG

Well govt spending can, even Stalinist USSR showed us this (USSR went from a peasant to an industrialized economy at the point of a gun). But I assume we both agree that this isn’t ideal.

The point of a stimulus is to be temporary, once private demand increases public spending should be cut back. As GDP improves tax revenue will increase too, for the same tax-rate. Combined with reduced govt spending as the stimulus ends, the deficit takes care of itself.

But Obama delaying most of it until 2010 seems like madness. A delayed stimulus? It’s needed now.

And if businesses and consumers have cut back investment and demand then another source is needed. It is expected that stimulus spending isn’t particularly efficient, but that isn’t necessary. It’s to prevent further decay of the capital stock. (What is the total value of the US capital stock, $200 trillion? Is it not worth spending a trillion or two to safeguard it? This is the most important asset that gets handed over to future generations.)

As any smart person knows, the correct order is:
1/ Fix the economy
2/ Fix the deficit

Again, AV, you show your abysmal ignorance of real economics. Deficit spending, on the order Obama is doing it, is the problem with the economy. Until he stops this insane spending to pay off his political allies, the economy will continue to tank, and unemployment will continue to skyrocket, along with the gas prices his insane spending has also made to skyrocket.
His attacks on the private sector, where all wealth is generated, are preventing any present investment that might create economic growth in the short run. In the long run, the very real prospect of both skyrocketing tax rates and inflation prevent anyone with a brain from investing for the future, so he has effectively killed the fundamental mechanism that creates economic growth: the application of privately owned and controlled capital to both labor and raw materials.
Obama is directly responsible for this, and it won’t get better until he ceases every single one of his economic policies and returns to real American economic values.

Say GDP = $10 trillion.
Tax revenue = $3 trillion
Govt expenditure = $3 trillion
So the budget is balanced.

Wrong! The govt has taken 30% of what we have created, and spent it on…? The govt is not entitled to confiscate our money beyond what it needs to do its Constitutionally required duties.
If it’s spending more than it should, both spending and taxes should be reduced, leaving more money in the economy to make even more money.
Tax revenue of one trillion, govt spending of one trillion=balanced budget with much more economic growth.
Understand?

For you piece of shit Obama voters and worshippers..you’ve dug a hole you will never survive. Obama will destroy ALL credibality the Democrats ever had. He will set RACISM back 100 years. Who will ever trust or believe A Black man can run our country again? Obama was a disaster in Congress and he’s a complete failure in the WH…It’s gonna be fun burying you POS Liberals’s asses

The point of a stimulus is to be temporary, once private demand increases public spending should be cut back

Okay. Temporary. Except that the stimulus isn’t targeting market demand. It is targeting democrat policy priorities that are in little to no way reflected in the market. That the first problem. If the stimulus came by way of less tax liability and therefore more money to spend and invest by those who are actually responsible for the supply and are those demanding products and services, I’d agree. But it’s not.

Second, our debt may very well prevent any additional government deficit spending from doing anything but sustaining the economic downturn. The national debt is a burden on prosperity. The higher the debt, the greater the burden. Couple the currently ungodly national debt ($1 mil. per American family) with the “same” tax rates or likely higher rates and everybody ought to reach the same conclusion. This is a burden which is unrealistic and has destructive economic consequences. Time will prove the ignorance of our President’s economic policies. I hate to say it. I really wanted that new Samsung LED this year.

…he decides to cut $1 trillion (from 3 to 2) in govt spending. Here’s where you go off the rails; that would leave one trillion dollars in the hands of those who earned it, and who know how to create economic growth. He sacks half the teachers, soldiers, military production, and makes oldies pay out of pocket for their drugs. More bullshit from you; in the first place, military spending is one of the few legitimate reasons for the govt to spend our money. Clinton’s foolish defense and intel cuts enabled 9/11. Again, Obama has no Constitutional entitlement to “sack” anyone, except the members of his own Executive Branch. The private sector should decided who is worth supporting and who isn’t, by voting with their dollars. In addition, the cuts need to be made to the wasteful social spending programs and the entitlements to the govt employee unions. If there’s to be unemployment, govt workers should be unemployed first, before anyone in the private sector(where all the wealth is created). Furthermore, “the oldies” as you put it, have already paid into those programs for their entire working lives, and should get what they’ve been promised. Fire the union fat cats and their drones to save money!

Of course, it’s only because he is completely incompetent on the economy; his Marxist ideology has never worked, anywhere it’s been tried, and is especially inappropriate in a free country with a free enterprise economic system.
His failure shows the foolishness of ideological thinking in a situation where real world practical thinking is required.
His policies are neither sensible nor reasonable, and it shows.

This blaming thing is juvenile. I didn’t like it when Clinton did it, I didn’t like it when Bush did it, and I don’t like it now.

Part II: Say Obama listened to Rob’s radio show and decided he should balance the budget instead. GDP has contracted to $9 trillion already and he decides to cut $1 trillion (from 3 to 2) in govt spending. He sacks half the teachers, soldiers, military production, and makes oldies pay out of pocket for their drugs.

But the sacked teachers and soldiers now spend very little money in the economy, all those producing WMDs are out of work too. So there will be a multiplier effect. Say 3x (conservative). That means there will be $3 trillion less economic activity (GDP). Now GDP will be $6 trillion.

Way to go Rob, you and your un-American SAB bedfellows would have succeeded in further smashing the US economy. (And govt. expenditure as a percentage of GDP will have increased slightly too, so not exactly “small govt”.)

All the deficit cry-babies should be guantanamoed for being traitors!

HG, the net global economic output has declined, but the problem is demand, not supply. Labor and capital are currently underutilized. Demand has to increase for the economy to improve (a truism).

But how to do this is the question.

Do we have government take large swaths of private capital to spend on worthless projects of no value? Of course not. We’ve been trying that for over a year, and this has CREATED the problem. The more we spend, the higher unemployment climbs.

What we do, is we step back, stop taking private resources, and let private business fix the economy.

Can you think of a better way to stimulate demand? “Market forces” isn’t an answer, it’s a cop-out, it’s only ideology. Every rational actor in a marketplace looks after their own interests, and the rational response is to cut spending so as to put oneself in a better position. If everyone did this, the economy would obviously further contract as demand would be lower.

Yet, you overlook the basic flaw in your own thinking. In bad times, if businesses are just going to cut back to make more money…then even if we give them money, they wil lstill cut back.

Of course, if this was how it worked, the economy would never recover from a recession. But as we see from history, there have only been two US depressions, both caused by the gov’t. One was after the civil war, when the North crushed the South and destroyed their infrastructure…setting them back decades. The other was the “do something” era of the Great Depression, which lasted a decade. Without gov’t intervention, the problem rarely lasts more than a year. And, in the case of the do nothing recession of the 80s, the economy fixed itself in 7 months…just barely long enough to be called a recession.

Well govt spending can, even Stalinist USSR showed us this (USSR went from a peasant to an industrialized economy at the point of a gun). But I assume we both agree that this isn’t ideal.

The USSR went from almost a hundred years of both internal and external warfare, to a period of murder of dissidents. Slaughtering the opposition instead of trying to coexist has the chilling benefit of creating an environment where people are terrified to oppose even the stupidest of ideas. All of a sudden, food is in abundance, unemployment is low, and the people are unified as one…under point of gun.

This isn’t progress in any rational sense of the word.

The article was too kind. His policies are ruining the economy, we, and our children and grandchildren will be paying for this socialist experiment for decades to come.

Liberal’s Golden Rule – We must all suffer equally!