30 January 2009

Will the 'stimulus' work

No, I'm not being obnoxious. Well, I'm not only being obnoxious; the 'stimulus', at least initially, is mostly going to preserve jobs, not stimulate new ones.

Ah, but here's Megan McArdle:
There are really two quite separate debates going on over the stimulus, but they're being jumbled together into one gigantic ad hominem. My take on both--pardon for being perhaps a tad obvious, but I think the debate has had a tendency to wander off into the weeds, so it's useful to be a little general from time to time:

Question #1 Will a fiscal stimulus work?

Define "work". If the question is "Can borrowing money and spending it increase our measured GDP figure?" then yes, it is trivially true that stimulus "works". So why don't we borrow a zillion dollars and spend all of it? We could quadruple our standard of living overnight?

Y'all can read the rest here:http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/dissecting_the_stimulus_debate.php

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