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First a Quote From Bobo from Marion in Savannah
Has all this money done anything to actually stimulate private economic activity? Not that you’d notice. Consumption is cratering. The U.S. economy just experienced the sharpest real drop in consumer spending since 1974.
The lesson here is that we have a right to be skeptical of so-called stimulus packages. The Federal Reserve can effectively stimulate the economy. There are certain automatic government programs, like unemployment insurance, which also do it. But the history of the past century suggests that politically designed, ad hoc stimulus packages rarely work.
Often they get the timing wrong; they come too late to do any real good. Often they get the pressure points wrong; the economy is simply too complicated for lawmakers to know where to apply the stimulus patch.
Has all this money done anything to actually stimulate private economic activity? Not that you’d notice
Bobo is a moron there has been no stimulus from Bush’s war spending because there has been no return on investment from Bush’s spending.
Now if Bush had won the war and oil prices had gone down and stayed down long enough to pay for the cost of the war then we would have broke even.
Lower oil prices after the war was paid would have been a return on investment.
Opportunity Costs though also have to be measured like could we get a better return on our money by doing something else?
Like for example GOING AFTER OSSAMA BIN LADIN!
If Ossama launches another terror attack Bush’s decision to let Ossama live and invade Iraq instead is going to cost America severely.
Rebuilding our Nation’s roads, bridges sewer systems etc will give us benefit retooling Detroit to make hybrid cars will save us gas.
Which means the Arabs have less money to give Ossama.
The American made and designed Aptera Car could cause such a demand created drop in oil prices that Ossama will have to get a day job flippin burgers!
Bobo confuses pork spending with economic stimulus, a return on tax payers money is the first step of deciding if spending is pork or stimulus and if the spending is the best use of our money/Opportunity cost.
http://www.aptera.com/
9 Comments
http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/
My link to Marion in Savannah disappeared from my comment sorry!
there should have been no “fund” given to this administration, they have already proven they will steal, giving them more to steal is being a maschist.
the “stimulous” the democrats should have written would have gone directly into the economy, NO middle man, no banks no nothing.
make government loans available to small business, re-evaluate the value of homes and those in foreclosure could be bought by those who already owned those homes AT NO PENALTY
that would have done the trick and cost less exponentially
I really like an Obama proposal for direct spending on infrastructure.
As usual, Bobo intellectualizes away cause and consequence. “Has” the money “done”? The passive construction strips away agents and agency. It denudes the question of its implicit assumptions.
Was the taxpayer money given to private banks (with no apparent strings, not even a “thank you” was required) intended to bolster the financial system and reform its practices, or merely to insulate its top leadership from the consequences of their actions?
Were Mr. Bush’s wars, outsourcing and defense spending meant to stimulate “private economic activity”, a question for a graduate seminar at the University of Chicago? Or were they meant to denude government and taxpayers of precious resources, while building up isolated pockets of wealth? Is promoting “private” economic activity the only authentic purpose of government action and spending? Or is government — as the representative of all of us — meant to curb the excesses of such private activity (predatory lending), while developing resources (roads, bridges, schools) useful for all of us, not just owners of individual businesses?
Mr. Brooks is most interesting for the questions he doesn’t ask, the things he doesn’t say, the way his language builds up his sponsors’ interests while tearing down what they oppose. Today’s column is no exception.
That is a real good point is it Cognitive Dissonance or is he really that dumb I lean toward dumb myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
But I have to admit that Cognitive Dissonance fits too.
I think Bobo is a court jester, a wise fool who assumes a role as a low-key, genial critic of the “left”, pretty much anything to the left of Genghis Khan. (Redefining the “center” as wherever the neocons happen to lie is one of his specialties.) I do not think he is authentic or well-meaning, any more than Hugh Grant or Jimmy Stewart is or were bumbling, or Keira Knightley or Bette Davis are or were shy, humble or unassuming.
I disagree with many of Bobo’s observations, and virtually of his conclusions, but I think he is smart. His arguments are carefully constructed, like Bill Safire’s before him, to undermine the left and promote the right. Unlike the more obviously partisan Safire, Bobo assumes the guise of an academic analyst, rather than that of an outright propagandist, which makes his propaganda easier to sell.
Hey Genghis was a competent leader Bush wishes he were half as smart as Genghis. Bobo is a propagandist but even he can’t sell dogfood that the dogs don’t like.
Bobo does assume the guise of an academic analyst to appear more objective which gives him more cred but the twisted leaps from logic he uses to reache his conclusions betray that he is no Academic.
Agreed. But try telling that to Jim Lehrer, who thinks hiring Bobo (and Mark Shields) and having them sit round the campfire on Friday nights for tete a tete is enlightening our minds rather than selling us propaganda. Brooks may occasionally iron his shirt and press his trousers, he may say please and thank you occasionally, but he’s still a rank propagandist. Why manners impresses Lehrer more than substance is a bewilderment.
I am confused about that as well maybe Bobo is the best the GOP has?