Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (501871)	8/6/2009 12:01:55 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574879

>> According to the economists it added 2%+ to last quarters GDP. As with all things economic, it depends on which economist you ask. If you ask an Obama supporter, they might say "3%". But if you ask someone who is more rational about it -- "I don't think the effect of stimulus has been very large," said Edward Lazear, an economics professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business who advised former President George W. Bush. "Very little has gone out." But I think you are really missing the overriding point. If you are one of the employeds who received an extra $25, you're spending it, and sure, that "helps" the economy a tad in the immediate term. But there are at least a couple of "gotchas" -- a) In the long term, that $25 adds to the national debt which will result in inflation and require increased interest rates to try to check the inflation; and b) As soon as that $25 is gone, the benefit is over. The unemployed still has no job and no real prospects for work. If he does stumble into a job created by the "stimulus", as soon as that job is over, he is unemployed again, just as happened in the FDR administration. We know from history that government spending will give some people some immediate relief, but as soon as the government stops spending, the relief stops, too. Meanwhile, you've triggered inflation that will be a persistent problem for decades. (The inflation of the 70s has been attributed by some, correctly, to government spending that occurred under FDR).