{"id":4106,"date":"2009-01-29T10:09:45","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T15:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4106"},"modified":"2009-01-29T10:09:45","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T15:09:45","slug":"all-sizzle-no-steak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4106","title":{"rendered":"All Sizzle, No Steak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How bad is the stimulus?<\/p>\n<p>Look &#8211; I&#8217;m a Friedman guy; free market <em>uber alles<\/em>.\u00a0 The only justification for any Keynesian frippery in this sort of situation is <em>if it creates jobs<\/em>, directly or (not very) indirectly.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>How bad is it, though?\u00a0 When you hear people saying &#8220;aren&#8217;t artists&#8217; paychecks just as important as factory workers&#8217; paychecks?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No, they are not.\u00a0 Art is a good thing; I can even justify <em>some <\/em>public purchase of art on some level (say, public architecture).\u00a0 But art as a rule isn&#8217;t a job creator &#8211; certainly not in any major numbers.\u00a0 (And let&#8217;s not jobs at Broadway theatres, here; Broadway isn&#8217;t art, it&#8217;s commerce).<\/p>\n<p>The good news?\u00a0 At least the Republicans <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scsuscholars.com\/2009\/01\/bully.html\">sacked up and voted unanimously against <\/a>the stimulus bill yesterday, for all the good it did.<\/p>\n<p>But even <a href=\"http:\/\/postbulletin.typepad.com\/political_party\/2009\/01\/a-pile-of-donkey-dung.html\">some Democrats get it:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That bill that came out of the House of Representatives is a <strong>pile of donkey dung<\/strong>. It&#8217;s not going to do any good,&#8221; Murphy said. &#8220;They&#8217;ve got their priorities bass-ackwards. The majority of that money should be for infrastructure.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He&#8217;s pretty smart for a DFLer.<\/p>\n<p>I bet he has an interesting time at his next convention&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How bad is the stimulus? Look &#8211; I&#8217;m a Friedman guy; free market uber alles.\u00a0 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,20,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-democrats","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}