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Originally Posted by Riot
What should we do if we are five years from job growth? Just sit here and wait for it to happen? How will it happen if we are in a depression, or still in a recession?
Those "few" jobs here and there add up (the money is there to be spread over two years of it), and those jobs are sure important to the people that were unemployed two months ago, but have them now.
Is it your position that it would have been better to not spend that money, not improve our dangerously crumbling and outdated infrastructure (bridges collapsing on people, highway repairs, etc) and not hire those people?
Look at just the auto industry: what if, instead of stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc., the government did a complete hands off, and allowed the auto industry to fail?
Where would we be right now, six months later? Were would unemployement be? Would we be in a stabilizing recession, or would we have fallen off the cliff?
Clinton handed Bush a balanced, rapidly decreasing deficit, and Bush raised it to the highest deficit ever, and ignored a developing recession. Now we have to get out of it.
We are not in a place where hands off or cutting spending are really viable options at this time, and that's what most of the major economists have been saying all along.
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forgive my pessimism, since it's my thinking that the govt got us into this morass in the first place. so far be it from me to think they can get us out of it. i also don't believe that job gains that may result from all this increased spending will turn out to be enough to tackle the resulting deficit. i think the increased deficit to new record numbers will be worse in the long run for us than adding a few jobs here or there, because of the harm it will do us overall. look at the talk right now about our ability to borrow.
legitimate spending where necessary is one thing, coming up with new programs that are tremendously expensive is absolutely ridiculous imo. like i said above, getting us out of the two wars that are one of the largest drains on our treasury would be a huge help.
most economists are saying our deficit is our number one biggest problem. obama is working on making that worse, not better.