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I post you the actual research, and you claim that it's biased and post a New York Times editorial in response? the National Bureau of Economic Research is too biased for you... but the New York Times... :lol:
cmon man, you are smarter than this. you didn't even read the sources presented. ;-)
as bias is concerned - when you assume your result, you are being biased. the economic models that the organizations listed are utilizing assume a positive multiplier which predetermines their result. You can do anything with it - its the neatest trick.
For example, yesterday I purchased groceries; it came out to about $80. I live in Okinawa. By sliding the "multiplier effect" around, I can choose to have created 0 jobs, 10 jobs, or 10,000 jobs with that $80. Then I just work backwards, and claim that however many jobs that exist today, we would have 0, 10, or 10,000 jobs fewer if I hadn't bought those groceries. It's a non-falsifiable thesis.
A great way to test a theory is to see if it's predictions hold up. Were the Keynesian models that were used to support passage of the original stimulus correct, then they would have been able to describe it's effects.
So, did the predictions about the effect of the stimulus on the economy turn out to be accurate?
No, they didn't. In fact, they were wildly off-mark. In fact, we lost more jobs with the Stimulus than they claimed that we risked losing if we didn't pass the stimulus. Now, this would be precisely the result we would expect if we were operating under the theory that taking money from the productive sectors of the economy and pouring it into the unproductive sectors reduces overall production.... but it sort of flies in the face of Keynesian economics. Which is also what we would have expected, if we had simply assumed that the historical model would hold - given that every time Keynesians make a major prediction, it has turned out to be wrong.
Here is what we were told would happen with v without the stimulus:
here is what actually happened:
Hmm, now that looks like the stimulus deepened the recession, delayed recovery, and resulted in more unemployment than would have been the case has the government not taken great masses of money out of the productive sectors of the economy and spent it on vital things like propping up bloated state budgets one more year, and studying robot bees. Of course, it is still possible that the Keynesian theory that government can allocate resources better than the market, and that taking money from productive sectors and putting it into unproductive sectors will increase production is still true - perhaps this is just what happens in recessions. Were that the case, we would be able to compare this recession to recessions where we hadn't engaged in massive stimulus spending, and we would be able to see that this recession was comparably quick and easy.
So, is that true? If we were to compare this recession other recessions where we didn't pass a massive near-trillion-dollar stimulus, would this recession look deeper and longer?
well, let's see:
Gosh that's interesting. It looks like choosing to take massive amounts of money from the productive sectors of the economy and pour it into the unproductive sectors of the economy has hurt unemployment, and caused unemployment to remain deeper longer than any other post-war recession. Had we managed to match the success of the "responses" where we had not engaged in taking massive amounts of money out of the productive sectors and giving it to politicians to spend in the non-productive ones 11.9 million more Americans would be employed. (that's an editorial, but the number is sound).
Again. The uniform experience of all 30 OECD countries over 4 decades does not lie. Taking massive amounts of money from your productive sectors and giving it to politicians as they see fit in the hopes that this will boost production and employment and spur recovery works about as well as kneecapping your horse to make him run faster.
this is incorrect - what wage increases are being measured against is a "standard basket of goods" which keeps increasing as well. So, for example, a family that makes an inflation-adjusted constant $50,000 a year will see their "real income" go down as more and different goods are added to the basket. It costs more in 2011 to own a computer than it did in 1990 not to own one - and so the "real wage" of the owner will be pushed down, despite the fact that his inflation-adjusted wages have remained the same, and now he has a computer. the effect is the same (though larger) when they added a second car, and a larger house. And even that model is too simplistic, as it assumes income stability, which such is not the case - Americans tend to switch from one quintile to the next, generally earning more as we grow older and develop higher-value job skills. When you look at the actual individual households, the picture becomes even better. A 1996 study from the Urban Institute, showed that large numbers of Americans move into a new income quintile, with estimates ranging from 25 percent to 40 percent in a single year. It's worth noting, however, that much of that movement is between the top and second quintile - most of our "rich" are just having a good year or two. But the movement is there at the bottom as well: A 2000 Economic Policy Institute (same link) study showed that almost 60 percent of Americans in the lowest income quintile in 1969 were in a higher quintile in 1996, and over 61 percent in the highest income quintile had moved down into a lower income quintile during the same period.
But, broadly speaking, here's what median income adjusted for inflation looks like from 1970 through 2006:
you will notice it's general movement is up.
you are engaging in circular logic and putting forth a non-falsifiable thesis by supporting the notion that you can assume a multiplier that research demonstrates is unlikely to be in play in order to have "saved or created" jobs irrespective of the real world results of the stimulus program. The theory is dependent either on ignoring that money has to come from somewhere, or wishes to pretend that politicians are more studied, professional, and efficient allocators of resources than the private sector.
no, but there is a natural price for labor in given markets in given times. that is the price that the market would determine were all sellers in competition with each other. whenever a cartel is created, they seek to artificially increase the price of their product. This is true whether the product you are selling is steel, marijuana, or labor. It is also true that increasing the price of something decreases the overall demand for that product - though the degree to which it does so varies (this is known as a products' "Price Elasticity"). As technology increases and the global supply chain is deepened and refined,the price elasticity of labor is increasing
the attempt to alter the price of borrowing was absolutely the major driver of the housing bubble. you can't change prices without unintended negative consequences - usually worse than the problem you are trying to "solve".