MaggieD
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2010
- Messages
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Legitimate question. I had a feeling it would be brought up.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the alternatives to the government stimulus. Most people were cutting jobs and cutting spending. I do not believe a tax break alone would have picked the economy back up anywhere near how quickly we came back with the stimulus. Yes, unemployment is high and the economy is still slow to recover, but we needed some way to stop the bleeding, and quickly. A reduction in taxes would have been slow and unreliable (not to mention it would have increased our deficit and debt just as much). How would we know jobs would have been created in the areas where jobs were needed? How would we even know that the people and businesses would have spent the money they saved or recieved when the economy was looking the way it was? Even now we have businesses sitting on trillions of dollars.
The stimulus spending created jobs. Jobs that would not have been there otherwise. Through projects that in some cases will lead to other jobs being created. Yes, the stimulus wasn't perfect... you have politicians, both locally and on the federal level, to blame for that. But I don't believe the stimulus was a complete failure.
I agree. Though we could have done better, the stimulus was not a complete failure. To many, though, it looked suspiciously like a handout/payback/bribe to unions -- and much of it was.