“O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus,” argues columnist and economist Paul Krugman. Krugman contends that the U.S. economic reports look “depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied economic policy in the 1930s. Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.”
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48 Comments
Time to up the ante.
We don’t need no stinkin’ stimulus argues Tiahrt.
Krugman makes a good living being wrong. The stimulus doesn’t work so the nation has poured money down a rat hole. So naturally since it didn’t wrok, we need a second, bigger stimulus so we can pour more money down the rat hole; and devalue our currency further.
I know that Krugman is a Keynsian disciple, but please, let’s quit digging.
We just need a bigger surge to flush the bush waste out of the system.
It’s time for America to roll up it’s sleeves and get back to work. Just say no to stimulus funds. Americans are not trained monkeys dancing at the end of a chain.
Just ask: did the people handing out “stimulus” funds earn the stimulus funds themselves? Of course not. Its the old Communist way, “Take from the many off their sweat stained overalls. Give to the few according to their self-determined, unearned and undeserved needs.”
Or better yet: Borrow from the many of other countries with promises of a minimum repayment of 5% interest(interest only) per year from now through eternity. Give to American or illegal workers at minimum wage, taking care to carve off a generous portion to the money changers in the federal government waiting behind the curtains.”
Like the repub wonk Joe the Plumber says ” The founding fathers knew that Socialism, and Communism would never work!”
Seriously Browlib…did you not just post this exact same article a couple days ago???
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. How far down can we go before the libs wake up and see the stimulus has failed.
Remember, Paul Krugman was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in economics. Kinda sums up in one neat little package just what is wrong with the whole Nobel Prize thing.
It appears that famous ‘conservative’ the libs like to brag dragging to their corner is having second thoughts as many libs are:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – In a wide-ranging interview set to air Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, one of President Barack Obama’s most prominent Republican supporters says he is ‘concerned’ about the new president’s ambitious agenda and the high price tags accompanying many of Obama’s initiatives.
“I’m a little concerned,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell says. “I’m concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them.”
Powell also seems to sound a note of warning to the young president.
“I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all.”
Perhaps you can list the “many libs” you refer to, “okobserver.”
“Substance.”
Y’know?
And what do you think “HLP” would think of your ass?
“Substance.”
Y’know?
DFB
Posted July 3, 2009 at 1:07 pm | Permalink
Seriously Browlib…did you not just post this exact same article a couple days ago???
————————————
No, but yesterday we did predict this headline.
WE TOLD YOU SO!
MORE STIMULUS NOW!!!!!
(Sounds better then “gimmie, gimme, gimme”)
okobserver,
Colin Powell is a war criminal, liar, and coward. He’s no friend of Democrats, or of democracy.
I just think it’s funny the way Bush apologists, apologists for the last forty years of declining wages and increasing productivity by the financialization of the American economy and the offshoring of American jobs, and apologists for the Federal subsidizing of defense, security, and oil industries are screaming like stuck pigs when the Federal government spends money on things they don’t like rather than on things that make their pals rich.
I also think it’s funny when they try to apply seemingly homespun, “common-sense” pronouncements to macroeconomic policy: “get your house in order,” “stop digging a hole,” etc.
Guess what, Wingnuts: if the Federal government stops spending money now, you’ll see those jobless numbers go through the roof. Seems obvious to anyone with half a brain that when an economy is dying of thirst, you don’t shut off the spigot. Obvious, that is, to everyone who isn’t trying to use this global meltdown as an excuse to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and anything else that puts large pools of capital off-limits to Goldman Sachs and every other capital-exploitative enterprise out there.
Since there’s absolutely no additional stimulus strategy yet revealed, “JimJohnson” clearly demonstrates the CONs and the Party of No have moved into full-tilt reactionary mode.
For all you, or I, or anyone knows, “Stimulus II” could be a wave of new tax cuts.
There’s actually a case for that, perhaps. Like, people aren’t going to go into more debt until they feel flush.
(Amazingly, this might be a lesson from Shruonomics. Conventional Wisdom said it was because people weren’t lending. Shrub bailed out Wall Street and they took the money and ran.
In fact, people were so worried about the Bush economy, and the way creditors were playing the rules, they chose to cut back on buying stuff.)
But that addresses the facts of the matter.
That matters not a whit to CONs.
They’re against anything they fear might prove this President of the United States is (unlike the previous one) competent and on top of the problems facing America today.
Do conservatives have any suggestions on what should be done? If we do nothing isn’t an unemployment rate of 25% possible? The 1930’s all over again. I’ll remind the conservatives, in the 1930’s America made its most serious flirtations with communism.
See this source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=sOCIHAAACAAJ&dq=The+forgotten+man&lr=&ei=5nJOSuPpB5HKMbX7zNAC
What is the purpose of government? Maybe we need to figure out what the government is good at, and what their bad at, and urge them to stop what their bad at.
I’m guessing, their bad at a lot of things.
StevenEDavis
Posted July 3, 2009 at 4:08 pm | Permalink
Do conservatives have any suggestions on what should be done? If we do nothing isn’t an unemployment rate of 25% possible? The 1930’s all over again. I’ll remind the conservatives, in the 1930’s America made its most serious flirtations with communism.
_____________________________________
Of course the CONs want to quit because they are the Party of Quitters.
The CONs have ZERO ideas.
Barnie,
Oh. As bad as you are with grammar, and who knows what else?
Oh, SOCIALISM is the answer.
SPEND.
SPEND.
SPEND SOME MORE.
SPEND.
SPEND AGAIN.
National Debt:
$10, $20, $30, $40, $50 Trillion or more!
Bloody O’Bama was rollin’ up the score.
Aaaaghhh! The Stupid! It burns!
“I’ll remind the conservatives, in the 1930’s America made its most serious flirtations with communism.” [SED]
Good reminder Steven… One that many wingnuts choose to either forget, or ignore… As I recall, we came very close to electing a Communist Party member as President in that time period…
If the stimulus money had really been used to stimulate the economy this recession would be almost over. When the people have money to spend they buy things, cars, houses, clothes, food, entertainment, etc… Which keeps the suppliers of these goods and services busy and they in turn hire more employees.
This money did nothing because the only payrolls that were expanded were in the government.
StevenD that is your answer. The solution Obama chose cost us jobs and put us much deeper in debt.
Tell us something productive he has done to improve the economy one iota. Before your start with ‘he came into a Bush recession’, I’ll give you that – now what has HE done to make things better.
Chas
Posted July 3, 2009 at 4:36 pm | Permalink
“I’ll remind the conservatives, in the 1930’s America made its most serious flirtations with communism.” [SED]
—————-
That is until now. Compare communism to what Obama wants to do. Name the differences. You won’t find many.
The smart thing, Obama could have done, to utilize the stimulus money better. Would be along the lines, of installing a intercontinental high speed passenger rail system, that uses magnets, something they are doing, or toying with in Europe. The trains can reach speeds of 300 mph. Urge airlines to go small, and start using smaller passenger jets, which are more efficient, and if a plane crashes a lot less people die. With smaller airports, but more airports connecting to more places. Those two examples I’ve given alone, would of created 100’s of thousands of jobs for years to come. Give more freedoms and deregulation to smaller farmers, while enacting more regulations on Large Industrial Agriculture Corporations like Monsanto which pretty much have a monopoly on some areas of Agriculture. Which is creating less nutritional food, that has pesticide genetically engineered into it. Who knows what the long term health implication are for some of this crap, industrial farms are putting on the market. It does seem like we don’t have one major project that’s even worth mentioning that the stimulus package is funding, or at least supplementing.
It seems like the Stimulus package was just spent, without even trying to create someway of making new industries, or creating a renewable source of money, energy, or anything.
It was like a short term spending splurge. Without any investments. Where the hell are the investments at. Did they really spend this money without investing it into anything. It seems like lunacy to not create renewable sources of income, employment, energy, or anything that would continue to pay off dividends for years to come. Seems like all it did, was quickly put money into the pockets of people, who are just excited to see money from the government.
So the government took the stimulus money, and gave it to state and local government. Like state and local governments are going to solve any problems. Maybe the government should have let people, and private industry bid on contracts that would actually improve something. Or not bid, just give the money to people in the private industry who has the best ideas to create new industry.
I think that’s gotta be one of the biggest problems, is the dwindling of industries here, because of the outsourcing to other countries. People selling our jobs down the river, so they can live the high life, is what it sounds like. More like astronomically high life.
Well, nothings changed, our government and politicians are bought and sold by private industry, so they can have the politicians they’ve paid for in office to pass whatever laws will benefit their corporations the most.
Or so it seems, I have not freakin idea what I’m talking about. Seems like a tangled web.
Chas. et al: I suspect the Communist of the 1930’s to whom you are referring was Wichita’s own favorite son, nominated by the Communist Party of America for President of the U.S. in 1936 and 1940, EARL W. BROWDER.
Soundly whipped by Franklin D. Roosevelt both times, Browder drew 80,000 votes in ‘36 and even less, 47,000 votes in ‘40 … proof that even in those Great Depression and pre-WW II years, America wasn’t buying a no-work, borrow, borrow, “here’s free stimulus giveaway money” governmental philosophy.
I have suggested before the new unwanted, unneeded downtown ice hockey arena be named THE EARL W. BROWDER FLAT-OUT TAXPAYER FINANCED WHITE ELEPHANT ARENA.
It’s my understanding the arena’s special interest supporters return to Wichita on nights of the Full Moon to meet on the top floor of one of downtown’s vacant office buildings to drink beer, smoke cigars and laugh at Wichita taxpayers far below who mistakenly financed the 1/2 billion dollar downtown arena.
JWink
Posted July 3, 2009 at 7:55 pm | Permalink
Browder drew 80,000 votes in ‘36 and even less, 47,000 votes in ‘40 … proof that even in those Great Depression and pre-WW II years, America wasn’t buying a no-work, borrow, borrow, “here’s free stimulus giveaway money” governmental philosophy.
———————————–
That is exactly the philosophy of the current Administration.
Thanks Chas for pointing out the similarity.
Chas
Posted July 3, 2009 at 4:36 pm | Permalink
“I’ll remind the conservatives, in the 1930’s America made its most serious flirtations with communism.” [SED]
Good reminder Steven… One that many wingnuts choose to either forget, or ignore… As I recall, we came very close to electing a Communist Party member as President in that time period…
——————————
Obama is close to Full Marxist mode.
Thanks Chas for pointing out the similarity between the present pending Greatest Depression, and the Depression of the 1930’s.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Let’s see, what has OBAMA wrestled away from the bourgeoisie:
Control of AIG
Control of the Banks
Control of Auto Makers
What’s next?
Control of Health Insurance Co’s (or elimination thereof)
Control of Power Co’s.
By the way… I just got back from the First Friday Communistic Liberal dimlib Music Night in Old Town. and that Arena is looking really good. The socialists are building up the surrounding socialist streets in the area for the comrades to enjoy. They are planting communist trees and socialist shrubs, all nurtured by the blood of the few remaining working patriots with socialist water from the communistic water system.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.
You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
Oil companies should be the next target, time to nationalize them.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
RIGHT PHANTOM!
GET THOSE EVIL RICH OIL COMPANIES NEXT!
OK, you be keeping your employees put down, don’t you?
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/Skyq54TUtPI/AAAAAAAAFuE/JywLBQ0kG_o/s1600/JoblossPercentJune2009
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/Skyq54TUtPI/AAAAAAAAFuE/JywLBQ0kG_o/s1600-h/JoblossPercentJune2009.jpg
Time to get back to the future and revisit the ideas of America’s greatest President, Franklin Roosevelt.
We have infrastructure and nature that BEGS for Government works projects. MORE people working for the Government = more Government working for the people.
Time for a bigger stimulus?
Damn right! Bring on some more of that FREE MONEY!!!!!
Obama’s not spending the money fast enough!
National Debt:
01/21/2009 $10,625,053,544,309.79
07/02/2009 $11,489,560,999,310.74
BlueJay
Posted July 3, 2009 at 10:06 pm | Permalink
Time to get back to the future and revisit the ideas of America’s greatest President, Franklin Roosevelt.
We have infrastructure and nature that BEGS for Government works projects. MORE people working for the Government = more Government working for the people.
– - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – — – - – - – - — – - – - – -
Get help real soon bj.
Krugman makes a good living being wrong. The stimulus doesn’t work so the nation has poured money down a rat hole. So naturally since it didn’t wrok, we need a second, bigger stimulus so we can pour more money down the rat hole; and devalue our currency further.
Since Krugman loudly criticized the stimulus package as being inadequate at the time, this of course completely misrepresents what he said. He never, in fact, claimed that the stimulus would work, except in the most depressed, crossed-fingers, hope-against-hope way.
So if you’re going to blast Krugman, you’ll have to do it on the basis on what he gets wrong in the future, as the result he predicted–e.g., slowing the slide, not a recovery–was exactly what he did say.
. . . and exactly what happened.
P.S. Without the stimulus, we clearly would have seen more job losses, more foreclosures, more homelessness, and more persons remaining in the ranks of the unemployed.
It was way better than doing nothing (the Republican plan).
Kinda funny, seeing Ma–er, Jim, with his usual “Obama Socialist” rant.
If a real socialist ever came to power, he wouldn’t even comprehend it.