US stimulus has been a success

US stimulus has been a success – a response to @GuidoFawkes http://bit.ly/m6SQQT

US stimulus has been a success l Left Foot Forward – http://bit.ly/lF4gx4

US stimulus has been a success l Left Foot Forward – http://bit.ly/lF4gx4

US stimulus has been a success – a response to @GuidoFawkes http://bit.ly/m6SQQT

Baloney

Unemployment at 9.1% is a success for Obama’s porkulus?

So in the we have a fiscal contraction which you think is “too far, too fast” yet UK unemployment is falling at its fastest pace in a decade, with the unemployment rate at 7.7%. That must mean that Osborne is having more success than Obama. We are indeed enjoying an “expansionary fiscal contraction”.

Being to the right of Osborne is not hard, he supported Labour’s spending policies until 2008. As for Karl Rove, what is not to like? He kicks Democratic arse election after election. Your complaint is essentially what? A succession of bogeymen Karl Rove, Osborne, UKIP, Guido. Not much of an argument.

Facts are facts the porkulus failed to achieve what its backers claimed, that it would create jobs.

Insert “UK” after “So in”..

Guido,

You can’t compare the current levels of unemployment in the UK & US when assessing the impact of the stimulus:

(1) Britain suffered lower unemployment than the US during the recession due to Labour’s labour market reforms so we started from a lower base.

(2) The US stimulus was meant to save jobs as well as create them. That doesn’t show up in Rove’s data which just shows the relatively static unemployment rate. The point is that it would have been much worse without the stimulus.

(3) Our unemployment level has improved before the cuts have really kicked in. For your expansionary fiscal contraction thesis to be put right you will to see unemployment continuing to fall through the austerity period ahead.

As for Rove’s record: one stolen election, the decimation of multilateral foreign policy,Iraq, Guantanamo, tax cuts for the rich, stagnating living standards for the middle class, a decade of job losses, erosion of Clinton’s balanced Budget. Given that he had to work with Bush you have to admire his electoral strategy but you’re welcome to him if you want to align yourself with that record.

Success?

Only if you are using the goal-posts-on-wheels that are now essential aparatus for modern Keynesians.

In real life, success is measured AFTER the intervention against criteria defined BEFORE the intervention, and incorporating in full all NPV items.

Will attempts to do precisely the opposite.

The conceit on the left never fails to amaze with respect to the ridiculous notions of “job creation” and “investing in jobs”.

Presumably Will’s eagerness to credit Obama for every job “created” in the last two years is matched by his urge to castigate Brown for every job he destroyed 2008-2010?

No politician has ever created a job for anyone (except, perhaps, the odd favoured colleague, sensing a quango opportunity). To invent jobs out of thin air, which no-one else is willing to fund with their own money, is nothing more than creating an overhead. And the future tax burden to fund it.

This tax burden, by undermining demand and scaring away real investors, actually DESTROYS real jobs.

And overheads created in isolation can never sensibly be termed “investment”.

Jobs are only ever really created by people willing to pay up-front with their own money.

@4

Will, your final paragraph reads like a precis of “A Journey”!

Guido;

Our “employment” figures are based off a survey. The accurate figures we have are for unemployment benefit recipients. They’re rising.

13eastie – Shame about the data showing you’re spouting a party line, not the facts.

@6 Leon

Re. “Shame about the data showing you’re spouting a party line”.

You have data about me? We’d all love to see it, Leon – a .ods file (with some nice charts) would be lovely.

Or perhaps you’re just full of it?

P.S. It is not MY blog posts that are delivered under a UNISON banner!

Really? Well, neither are mine, given I’m not a member of any union. What, you think I’d use my real name and let Tory employers discriminate against me for my political views? Heh.

And the data is well publicised. You just refuse to admit it exists, so giving you any example would be a waste of time – you would find a “reason” it wasn’t valid.

“Guido Fawkes has long been known for his libertarian economic positions”

For some reason I doubt he subscribes to “Property is Theft!” and argues for the end of wage-labour by workers self-management of production…

Please, don’t let the UK-right steal the term “libertarian” from the left as they have in America. We anarchists have been using libertarian since 1858 to describe our anti-state socialism. The free-market capitalist right have used it since 1950s — and knowingly stole it from the left. Call them “propertarians” NOT libertarians — they always place propertiary despotism over liberty…

I would like to see Guido’s Nobel Prize for Economics. Or am I asking far too much.

RT @leftfootfwd: US stimulus has been a success http://t.co/8nlD2Tz

(1) What were Labour’s market reforms that gave us lower unemployment? Youth unemployment was shamefully higher at the end of Labour’s term than it was at the beginning (and is actually today lower). Unemployment itself was higher at the end of Labour’s term than it was at the beginning. Incredible self-delusion on your part to claim otherwise.

(2) The US porkulus projections were as the chart said, they were not met, the outcomes were worse. You have no empirical basis for your claim that it would have been worse without the stimulus, that is mere conjecture. Given the false projections it is likely to be conjecture which is equally fantastic and plain false. Hard data and theory are too different things. Your theory has been disproved in real-time at the cost of $787 billion to the US taxpayer.

(3) If in 2014/2015 unemployment isn’t lower you will have a case. We shall return to this at that time. You should be aware that expansionary fiscal contractions are the rule, not the exception. Your article implies that this is some kind of untried air fairy theory. Empirically the historical evidence supports the concept.

Rove’s record: “one stolen election” – you mean the one the US body politic, laws and constitution ensured. Not forgetting all the other election campaigns where he kicked Democrat arse.

“The decimation of multilateral foreign policy” – you mean the foreign interventions backed by Nato?

Guantanamo – still being operated for practical reasons by Obama? I actually don’t approve of Gitmo but that is another matter.

As for aligning myself with him, well, I do like right-wing winners. It was just a factual graph to which I deliberately added his name, as the source, as a provocation.

Your prized porkulus failed to achieve the goals it was set, the expansionary fiscal contraction is under way in the UK. Suck it up.

Guido;

Yes, let’s compare fruitcakes and nuclear weapons. Or we COULD compare what happened before your beloved bankers kicked off a crisis, and find that you’re spinning the effects of a banker-caused global recession as being the fault of a single government. Hmm.

No, no, you need to defend the bankers since they’re private and hence by your definition good, got it.

Unemployment is falling because people are spending – i.e. loading debt on themselves with credit cards.

Can anyone else say ‘bubble’?

Guido, the fact that Osborne supported Labour’s spending plans until 2008 is one of the things which undermines his economic credibility.

And on the UK economy, what you forgot to mention is that the claimant count has been going up for months, public sector net borrowing was I think something like £17 billion more over the first 2 months of the financial year than the same period last year (so much for eliminating the structural deficit, and retail sails continue to fall. Osborne’s so called expantionary fiscal contraction is hurting but it isn’t working.

BTW Guido, since you said on the Daily Politics that increasing VAT was regressive, do you support Ed Balls’s call for a VAT cut in response to the retail figures?

http://order-order.com/2011/06/16/balls-calls-for-vat-cut-to-boost-consumer-spending/

VAT has always puzzled me. Can anyone show me if VAT cuts actually work or do retailers simply pocket most of the difference rather than pass it on? When Labour put VAT down to 15% a lot of jokes were made about how little shoppers were actually saving from it; something like seven pence on a £100 grocery shop.

Thank you, Guido.