@elzoog: You didn't answer the question. Would the economy be better or worse if we had NOT passed the stimulus packages?
It's impossible to say. Ever hear of the broken window fallacy? It goes like this. If we have teenagers going through town breaking windows, it's good for the economy. It would give window makers and glass manufacturers jobs. It would also give jobs to people who have to clean up the glass and it would give jobs to people that have to deliver the glass.
The reason this is a fallacy is that you see those benefits but you don't see the HIDDEN things. Like for example, if the business owner didn't have to fix his window, he could have used that money to buy something else. The people who spend time making the windows could have spent their time doing something else, and so forth. It's this SOMETHING ELSE that you DON'T SEE that shows it as a fallacy.
Likewise, since I haven't seen the actual results of "no stimulus in 2008" I can't say if it would be worse or better. All I can do is compare it to the past and the only past example I can think of, is 1872 when president Grant decided to not bail out the banks. It's hard to say that the economy of 2010 would be as bad as the economy of 1874 because there are too many other factors going on.
What tells me that the stimulus is probably a BAD idea though, is that most of that money went to people who made bad financial decisions. If the result of making a bad financial decision is that the government gives you millions of dollars than guess what? More people are going to make bad financial decisions!
If you don't think the government would be stupid enough to break windows in order to stimulate the economy, consider the "cash for clunkers" program.
Saying Hoover was a deficit spender is the conservative participation in revisionist history,
I guess saying Hoover was a man is revisionist history too since "man" has a certain definition, and Hoover happens to fit that definition.
Llkewise, "deficit spending" has the definition that you spend more than you take in in revenue (in the 1930s this could include tarriffs as well as taxes). Specifically, the debt went from 20% of the GNP in 1929, to 40% of the GNP at the end of Hoover's term.
Specifically, at the end of Hoover's term, the deficit was about 4 billion dollars. So "deficit spending" is a term that accurately describes what Hoover did.
He didn't want to spend money on "welfare", however he did spend money on government projects such as the HOOVER DAM. Notice, that HOOVER is part of the name of that dam?
(along with declaring Nixon as a liberal).
You realize that many "liberal" policies were started by Nixon right? Such as the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). To be fair though, the "liberal" policies of Nixon were initiated by outside pressure.
In 1931 he both increased taxes and decreased spending in the sacred name of a balanced budget.
He didn't decrease spending overall. He merely decreased spending on things liberals like.
Hoovers own words on March 8th, 1932..."Nothing is more important than balancing the budget with the least increase in taxes. The Federal Government should be in such position that it will need issue no securities which increase the public debt after the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1". http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=23478
Yeah, sort of like Reagan saying in his inaugural address in 1981 that government is the problem, and then increased government more rapidly than any other previous president.
Or the famous, "Read my lips. No new taxes." of Bush in the 1990s.
I would have though that someone that has lived through at least the 1990s would have learned that you judge a president on what he DOES and not what he "says".
The FACT that Hoover ran a deficit is pretty easy to check and verify A-Train.
The spending in 1932 you refer to, (Golden Gate Bridge etc.), came far too late and was far too little. That year he also signed the Smoot-Hawley Act, the largest tariff in U.S. History against the advice of all major economists; effectively raising taxes and prices.
The Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was signed in June of 1930, not 1932.
By the way, many economists today say that Obama should cut entitlement spending. Do you think Obama will do that, or do you think he will go against the advice of economists like Hoover did?
As for the advocating of an increase in taxes on the wealthiest 2% of U.S. citizens being a liberal hypocrisy?
That's not why I think liberals are hypocrites.
It's one I have no problem living with given the enormous tax breaks and subsidies they have received over the past 30 years and the relatively stable recovery we're in.
You mean, other than the rather minor detail being that it won't actually work?
The debt currently is at about 16.3 trillion dollars
(source:
http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
If we were to not only tax, but simply confiscate the wealth of the top 2%, it would not be enough to pay for a 16 trillion dollar deficit.
For example, Bill Gates is currently worth about $65 billion dollars
(source:
http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/ )
So we would need about 246 Bill Gates to pay for the 16 trillion dollar deficit. Given that Bill Gates is in the top 5 of the richest men in the world, we don't in fact have 246 Bill Gates. So obviously, we will need more than 246 people to pay for the debt. Given that we have 300 million people in America you would think that wouldn't be hard to do.
Unfortunately, when you do the numbers, if you add up all of the wealth of the top 2%, you still won't have enough to pay 16 trillion dollars. (I did this myself with the top 500 people and got that result).
By the way, the current GNP of the entire United States is $15.23 Trillion:
(Source:
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gnp_mktp_pp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us%20gnp )
In other words, the current debt is now GREATER than the entire GNP of the entire country.
What I would say is, that this debt will NEVER be paid back and that what we need to do is face the music of whatever the fallout will be of not paying the debt.