Tag Archives: Stimulus

News

Democrats want MORE wasteful stimulus spending and HIGHER taxes

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The Hill reports that some Democrats want to waste even more money on “stimulus” wealth redistribution. (H/T Marathon Pundit)

Excerpt:

Senior Senate Democrats are growing frustrated by what they see as President Obama’s passivity on the economy, and are beginning to discuss a large infrastructure package funded by tax increases.

Some Democrats, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who serves as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, think such a package could lower the unemployment rate by as much as two percentage points.

[…]“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin said. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” he said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed Harkin’s argument for more infrastructure spending, and said it is gaining support in the broader caucus.

“There’s very broad support,” Rockefeller said. “There’s no other way to get at this problem.”

Rockefeller said a spending package was discussed at several meetings Wednesday and that there’s a recognition Democrats need to be tougher in negotiations with Republicans.

“We have to be much more aggressive about all this, because as soon as they say ‘We’re not going to do that,’ as they’ve been saying for so long about so many things, you just kind of say ‘oh.’ We’ve got to stop saying ‘oh,’ ” he said, referring to the hard line Republicans have taken for Medicare cuts and against tax increases.

Even centrists like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) say a major infrastructure package funded by tax revenue-generating measures is what’s needed to strengthen the economy.

Here’s how well the stimulus spending has been working so far to create jobs:

Obama Unemployment Stimulus Graph
Obama Unemployment Stimulus Graph

And more:

Government Spending Vs Jobs

It’s not working! And they want more of this.

News

Men are the biggest losers in the recession

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From the American Spectator.

Excerpt:

Over the past decade, the total number of jobs for women went up by close to a million. Meanwhile, men lost more than 3 million jobs. From 1960 to 2008, the average unemployment rate for men 25 years and older was 4.2 percent. In the last two years, it has more than doubled, shooting up to 8.9 percent. By contrast, unemployment for women of the same age and for the same period of time went from 4.7 percent to 7.2 percent, an increase of 52 percent. The disparity is more striking if one considers that women’s rate of participation in the workforce has risen sharply since 1960 while the percentage of men in the job market has been shrinking.

One reason that men’s employment rate lags behind is that there has been negative growth in the types of jobs men historically have occupied. In the last 10 years, 5.5 million manufacturing jobs were lost. That’s one-third of our manufacturing base in an industry where men make up 70 percent of the workforce. In construction, where 87 percent of positions are filled by men, more than 1.4 million jobs went away during that time frame. Approximately 4.4 million jobs have been added in the education and health care sectors, but women dominate this growing field as they make up 77 percent of the work force.

It’s working-class men, not those who occupy elite positions in finance and government, who are suffering. The hemorrhaging of manufacturing and other well-paying jobs in America means that a rising number of young American men face dwindling prospects for earning a middle-class wage in the future. Young male unemployment is at 19 percent. More than 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans (most of whom are male) were unemployed in January 2011. African-American males also have been hit hard. Ten years ago, both African-American men and women had the same unemployment rate of 8.2 percent. Since then, the men’s rate has more than doubled and now is almost four points higher than the unemployment rate for women. Similarly, Hispanic men now have a 1.7 percent higher unemployment rate than Hispanic women, whom they historically have outperformed.

With growing numbers of out-of-work young men comes a volatile mix of negative social outcomes: they are less likely to marry, less likely to be a stable parental force for the children they father, and more likely to engage in violent behavior.

One would think that Washington policymakers would see these developments as a cause for concern. Nonetheless, for more than a decade, they have looked the other way as good American jobs have been shipped overseas, outsourced or have simply gone away. Ironically, our business tax system incentivizes our companies to export jobs and prosperity overseas. Also, our government welfare system all but discourages an intact family of a father and mother by the way it distributes money.

Men are not going to be able to fulfill their roles of protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader if they do not have the authority that comes from being the principle/sole breadwinner in the family. Right now, we have a situation where the schools are discriminating against men by having a tiny minority of male teachers, as well as co-ed classrooms. Men cannot learn as well when they are taught primarily by women and are distracted by female peers and do not have a separate male-focused curriculum. And that is why men now earn 40% of bachelor degrees on many campuses. Government’s massive spending and job-killing policies leave the few men who can graduate in an unstable employment situation where marriage becomes too risky. De-valuing a man’s savings with inflation doesn’t help, either.

News

The failed prediction that the mainstream media isn’t covering

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From Powerline Blog.

Excerpt:

I have been puzzled by the extent of the media coverage of some crank’s prediction that the world would come to an end today. People are always predicting the end of the world. So far they have always been wrong. Was there something about this particular prediction that was newsworthy? Did any significant number of people expect to wake up this morning and see graves opening and people ascending into Heaven? This morning, there were news stories to the effect that the world still exists. Really! Did reporters expect their readers to be surprised? Why, in short, was this silliness a major media event?

I wish reporters would pay as much attention to a more important failed prediction: the Obama administration’s assurance that its policies, including the “stimulus,” would foster job creation and prevent unemployment from reaching 8 percent.

And here are some charts from John’s post.

Community organizer Obama predicted that his $800 billion dollar stimulus program would keep unemployment below 8%:

Stimulus Job Creation Prediction
Stimulus Job Creation Prediction

Ooops! Never send a community organizer to do an economist’s job.

How about all that spending? Surely ALL the spending must have created more jobs?

Government Spending Vs Jobs
Government Spending Vs Jobs

Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute links to a new study by two economics professors that shows that 550,000 jobs were LOST because of the stimulus bill.

This should be the end of the belief that government spending creates jobs, but it won’t be, because the university is not committed to teaching what gets results, but what produces feelings of superiority. The secular elites feel that they should be allowed to redistribute the wealth created by businesses and workers. This feeling of entitlement to control and distribute is best put into practice with large-scale taxation, spending and redistribution of wealth. The professors think that their good feelings (subjective) will somehow, mysteriously, cause good effects in the real world (objective). The chart proves their mysticism wrong, but the university is insulated from feedback from the real world.

That is why we need to elect business owners like Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain.