All Sizzle, No Steak
By Mitch Berg
How bad is the stimulus?
Look – I’m a Friedman guy; free market uber alles. The only justification for any Keynesian frippery in this sort of situation is if it creates jobs, directly or (not very) indirectly.
Plenty of better bloggers than I have covered the overdose of pork that the stimulus provides; my associate editor Johnny Roosh has done a good job of that as well.
How bad is it, though? When you hear people saying “aren’t artists’ paychecks just as important as factory workers’ paychecks?”
No, they are not. Art is a good thing; I can even justify some public purchase of art on some level (say, public architecture). But art as a rule isn’t a job creator – certainly not in any major numbers. (And let’s not jobs at Broadway theatres, here; Broadway isn’t art, it’s commerce).
The good news? At least the Republicans sacked up and voted unanimously against the stimulus bill yesterday, for all the good it did.
But even some Democrats get it:
Senate Transportation Chair Steve Murphy has some big problems with the federal stimulus package working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives. The Red Wing Democrat said it spends far too little on transportation, while funneling money into education and health and human services, which will not generate the jobs needed to jump start the economy.
“That bill that came out of the House of Representatives is a pile of donkey dung. It’s not going to do any good,” Murphy said. “They’ve got their priorities bass-ackwards. The majority of that money should be for infrastructure.”
He’s pretty smart for a DFLer.
I bet he has an interesting time at his next convention…
January 29th, 2009 at 10:25 am
I’m with Murphy, and believe that the Senate will do its best to fix it. But if there was anytime at all that the Market needed to be allowed to play out, this is it. Any tinkering will only delay the inevitable. Time to suck it up, take our collective lumps, and pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Just walked by a TV…Barry signed the so-called “pay equity act”. This is where judges set pay rates. This will be a disaster. Barry is an idiot. Best line by The Messiah….he said that his own grandmother, working in a bank, hit a glass ceiling. Ummm, his grandmother was a bank president. Not bad for a typical white person.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Nah, he doesn’t get it. Infrastructure doesn’t improve the economy for many, many years, if at all. It doesn’t produce any permanent jobs, either. Take, for example, the $200 million pulled from the bill for resodding the D.C. Capitol Mall. That’s what– a month’s work for 10 guys? And the payoff is, what, since the Mall is free?
Murphy is right insofar as it DOES matter what the money is spent ON. But he’s still a typical DFLer in that he doesn’t know that it matters more WHO spends it, and that government is almost always the poorer choice.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Barry has been prez for a week. So far he’s spent 850 billion of OUR dollars and flipped the bird to the GOP minority. Hope! Change!
I’m beginning to think the guy is such a greenhorn that he believes Pelosi & Reid when they tell him that he doesn’t need republican support to govern. He’s going to become P&R’s play thing if he isn’t careful.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:16 am
What J. Ewing said. I saw that Ramsey County has its wish list for the stimulus money it would receive. So what is the top priority on the list? Something called the “2030 and Beyond Trail Network.” Never mind the county roads that are ignored year after year. Wouldn’t want to spend any money on things that would actually make people’s lives easier?
Jim Schottmuller has the skinny on his new blog, Ramsey County Exposed http://ramseycountyexposed.blogspot.com
January 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I used to live in Norhern Wisc, so checked out the wish list for Duluth and Superior for their free money. Superior is conservative Democrat (voted for Tommy Thompson for example). They want things like sewer work. Some needed road work. Basic infrastructure. Really nothing frivilous.
Duluth, which is liberal leftwing Democrat (crazy Herb Bergson was their mayor), wants things like a downtown trolly (a real one, not the rubber tire type) and that sort of thing. It’s like they are 4 year old kids a the toy section of Target.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Is the 275 Billion in Tax cuts considered Pork, I do, as I did when President Bush pushed through his tax gifts to the rich. Just wondering if the Tax Cut hawks now think that since it is a Dem cutting taxes it is now called Pork.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Just wondering, Flash – do you know how much of the ~150 billion/year the Bush tax cuts ‘cost’ the treasury went to the top quintile? Because if you do, you will be the first liberal I have run into who knows this.
Most of them just blather about ‘tax cuts for the rich’ without having a freakin’ idea what they are talking about.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Well, Terry, if they make the tax cuts permanent, about 90% of those in the Top Quintile will share in cuts, while zero goes to the Bottom (because they don’t pay taxes, plain and simple), and less then 10% of those in the Bottom 3 Quintiles (Bottom, Second and Middle) are receiving them. The Fourth is about 20%. In total, 23.4 % of all taxpayers are effected.
I have used the TaxPolicy Center (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/bush-tax-cuts/account.cfm) for reference, but admit it may be dated, so there probably is other updated sources out there.
My frustration with the Bush Tax gifts to the rich is it was billed as an economy booster, and if that is what you are trying to do, you need to put money in the hands of the people who will spend it, not those that will play it on the craps table known as Wall street. The Middle and even 4th Quntiles is where stimulus cuts should go.
But my point was only that almost 1/3 of this packages, which I still believe is an awful way to deal with the current situation, is tax cuts to individuals and businesses, something I wouldn’t automatically consider pork.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Why is it that when we raise taxes, we always raise them on the “rich,” but when we cut taxes, we always favor “the poor”? At what point does our tax system approach “fair”? I would argue that it went past fair many years ago, and every Democrat legislature or Congress has made it worse.
The question about the tax cuts in the stimulus package is just further deranged liberal thinking. A public works project gives temporary work to somebody that may already have a job and could be doing something more useful, but it pays out very slowly, over years. A tax cut puts money in the hands of people who will spend, invest or lend it out, and it does so immediately! Of course, the purpose of this bill has nothing to do with economic recovery anyway, so the best thing for the US economy would be for it to fail to pass.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
gifts to the rich
Dang! I must be rich, cause I gat a tax cut under Bush, and he doubled my dependent tax credit to $1000.
I’m going to go home and tell the wife we’re rich. She’ll be thrilled.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Flash, you are using language to obscure the clear meaning of words. I asked a very clear, direct question: “Do you know how much of the annual share of the Bush tax cuts went to the top quintile?”
Anybody can play games with numbers to try and spin things like tax cuts. You called the Bush tax cuts “tax gifts to the rich”. Leaving aside, for the moment, the idea that letting people keep the money they have earned is a gift, why can’t you tell me how much in dollars will actually be saved by the rich?
You might also want to look at tax receipts received by the government before and after 2001 and rethink your odd notion about how the Bush tax cuts failed as an economic stimulant.
These numbers are not hard to find. You might have to wander outside Soros.net to find them though.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
“Just wondering if the Tax Cut hawks now think that since it is a Dem cutting taxes it is now called Pork. “
Let’s do the math – 275B in cuts out of a 1.1T tax grab = a net tax increase of 875B. And you are wondering why Tax Cut hawks are not jumping for joy over this Porkfest monstrosity?
If your Dems are so keen on indeed providing for the 275B in tax cuts (instead of using it as a poitical cover), then why not author a separate bill? Reality bites, huh?
January 29th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
A public works project gives temporary work to somebody that may already have a job and could be doing something more useful, but it pays out very slowly, over years.
I think it might even be worse than you suggest. Obama said that he wanted funding for “shovel ready” projects which are projects where all of the preparations (e.g. regulatory burdens, bidding, etc.) have been completed that are ready to start within six months or so. Any infrastructure program that is that close to starting is probably one that has funding already allocated by State and local governments, which means that Obama won’t even be creating “new” temporary construction jobs – he’s going to have the federal rather than State and local taxpayers pick up the tab for projects that were probably going to happen anyway.
January 29th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Is this the proper time & place to bitch about liberals’ general ignorance on the topic of taxes and the history of taxes in the US? All they seem to know are anecdotes they read in The Nation.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
…and pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off…*Binnnng*[1000]….tax gifts to the rich….*poinnnng*[2498]………Tax Cut hawks…..*binnnng*[53873]……..Bush Tax gifts to the rich……*Boooop*[125328]……….the craps table known as Wall street……*Ding Dinnnnng*[297302 & Extra Ball!]
Oops, sorry. I was just playing a little Babbling pinhead pin-ball.
Got to get back to work now……..I’ve got to come up with my share of the $150 million for something called “honey insurance” which the Democrat congress says is going to stimulate the economy and keep me working to pay for the stimulus.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Flash- if the rich actually paid more in tax dollars after the tax cuts than before, how then is that tilted toward the “rich”, as you say? And the phrase “tax cuts for the rich” is the same Lib double-speak as “Affirmitive Action” (what the hell does “yes action” mean?). A much more honest and correct phrase would be ” Bushs tax cuts for the people who pay taxes.”
January 29th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I think art is an indulgence…and must always have been since artists have needed patrons going all the way back to Michelangelo and Mozart and..long list. If you want to play in the art sandbox, you find someone to pay for you…not “the rest of us”. I love art…the Minneapolis Institute of Art is one of our favorite places to go at least once a year. But I am not paying some yahoo to dabble around doing something that is supposed to represent his hissy fit against the “establishment” which is what 85% of that crap is for nowadays. Same with any “performance art” (plays, concerts, etc.).
January 30th, 2009 at 1:51 am
“My frustration with the Bush Tax gifts to the rich….”
Interesting. My frustration is the idea of taking less of someone else’s money is a gift for them.