What obozo should have done with the 800 billion he dropped on stimulus was give private sector employers a full subsidy/taxbreak to any business who hired on a new employee up to 50k, for the entire employees wage, that would have created 16million jobs, but we will cut it in half cause there would have been government shit heads involved. That means you could create 8 million jobs in the private sector and pay 8 million bureaucrats 50k a year to monitor the situation. What business would not hire on a new employee for free? All you liberals talk about increasing demand by giving it to the consumer, what better way then this? Obviously there is still holes in the idea and most of the money would have had to go to bigger businesses but it was such an easy out if your going to spend the money anyways. Instead he chose to give out foodstamps, welfare, and entilements to people who dont work, a liberal principle which has never worked. We dropped 800 billion at a cost of 600k per job to teach people in africa to wash there penis for a million dollars, Obama made a very specific move to keep the money and job creation in the hands of the government and now he is stuck wondering why it never worked. I thought of that idea off the top of my head, when the stimulus was going on, and a crew full of big government liberals couldnt put 2 and 2 together, it isnt that they dont want to create jobs it is that their entire thinking is flawed, and they only want to create government jobs, which has been proven wasteful time and time again. These politicians have no interest in stimulating the economy, they are only interested in stimulating their vote count. All the stimulus money did was fund the special interests who helped them get elected. The left wing philosophy has been to get the money into peoples hands thus creating demand for product, (keynesian economics) in order to get the economy rolling. Except that they got the money into the hands of the consumer in the least efficient way possible, at a cost of 600k a pop. With my idea we fund them at a cost of 50k a pop provided every person hired on gets paid the max amount of the subsidy. Through the stimulus we get to keep funding these government employees long after the money runs out, with my idea we fund private sector employees at a cost of 50k a pop, in a 1 time transaction, and afterwords the people become taxpayers and are actually beneficial to the system. Certain rules would obviously have to be put in place, like keeping an employee on for 2 years to get 1 year for free, or monitoring businesses so they werent firing one employee to hire another. Maybe make it for net job creation. This would have increased productivity in the private sector, at the same time it stimulated demand, and it eventually would lead to drawing down the deficit as opposed to adding to it. Current unemployment is about 9.6% leaving 15 million unemployed, my plan would create 8 million jobs cutting the unemployment in half. Using conservative estimates, where it would have cost 2 dollars for every 1 spent, you could have had 1 bureaucrat making 50k a year per new job which came in. Is there a liberal in the world who can argue that we would have been worse off with this idea?
I agree with this idea in general, though I would have advocated something like the Aussie method; worked for them. If you're going to borrow from labor, give it to labor.
why would liberals want to argue with you? maybe conservatives would argue as well. I think I am fairly liberal in my views and I think your idea has some merit. I'm just as pissed as anybody that so much $$ was dumped into so many politician's pet projects. It seems pretty hard to administer the program as I understand it. What would prevent "Joe's Construction" from hiring his stay-at-home wife and her two slacker brothers, thereby allowing them to collect what is essentially welfare with no guarantee that they will perform productive work?
Like i said dividing 800billion by 50k would equal 16 million jobs, so say we only create 8 million 50k/yr private sector jobs, you could also hire 8 million government employees for 50k a year which would be a 1 to 1 ratio to monitor fraud and abuse. You would probably only get 4 million government employees to monitor fraud and abuse(which would leave a 2-1 ratio), because the government would burn up atleast 200 billion in administrative costs. Make sure that these 4 million government jobs have provisions whereby they are like census workers, who must be fired after the job is done. That is still 12 million jobs in a year. WHERE THE HELL DID 800 BILLION DOLLARS GO?!?!?!?! I guess i jumped the gun on liberals in general, a very limited few may believe in small government, im a social liberal but i ABSOLUTELY DESPISE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES/POLITICIANS dont know if i made the point clear enough.... I got no problem with donating to charity or recently i have started doing charitable work, but i have a HUGE problem with government in the middle of it all, stealing my money for their own gain. I would rather burn 10k then give 9k to the government knowing where my money is going, everywhere you look they are taken care of in luxury over the everyday taxpayer. I am tired of these thieves on both sides. When i broke down the numbers from above in my head, it just went to further make me despise politicians, and bureaucrats even more. I cant believe more people have not come out and said enough is enough already.
I sympathize with your view and have no love for government employees either. But here's my problem with your plan: as soon as the money runs out, employment plummets and there'd be massive wage inflation due to this. Further, the idea of hiring more government worker to monitor private sector hiring is (1) a broken window fallacy in the sense that you did create any actual output and (2) hinders productivity by adding a huge layer of red tape in hiring. Think you'll find that in the end, your plan will create more unemployment and actual core inflation - so.... stagflation. (Please don't think for a second I like what Obama's doing. I just don't like your plans even more).
You want to debate legitamtely so i will be gentle with this response. Wage inflation does not occur when a bunch of people get laid off, infact it is the exact opposite, wage deflation occurs as people are losing their jobs. (supply/demand) The output is created through productivity due to new employees, who will be hired on for free, and new demand is created by the aforementioned employees having money to spend (keynesian economics)(supply/demand) ??? I need to know how creating 12 million jobs will create added unemployment. Please explain this to me in further detail, im not saying this to be mean but everything you have said is backwords. Are you on Obamas economic team? I am not saying this to be mean, please re-read your economics text book before the exam, you have every single principle backwords.
Sigh... as soon as the "stimulus" runs out, all the jobs that were created by being paid for directly by the stimulus money will immediately go away (I suppose not all - but certainly the vast majority). Think of it this way, if someone said I'll give you a guy to work for you for free, would you say no even if all you are going to have him do is to fetch you coffee? Of course not. But as soon as you stopped getting a check for paying him, you lay him off immediately. So, in the first phase of your 'plan', employment rises massively and so does wages (that good ol' supply and demand). Productivity falls dramatically as most of the jobs created are entirely inefficient. Wage pressure creates inflation. In the second phase, the stimulus money goes away. Employment drops dramatically as most of the jobs created were entirely pointless. Inflation is sticky and thus likely to be persistent for sometime before deflation kicks in. Either way, you are screwed. How does any of this helps exactly? Adding a few million jobs instantly doesn't mean anything if those jobs are essentially illusory. It'll just be a bubble in the job market that's pierced as soon as the money goes away.
Ok you have explained it more clearly now, your response makes a little more sense. I apologise for my earlier response, as you just didnt make any sense earlier. However, you are making the assumption that we are starting from a strong economy, obviously if we were starting from a strong economy some of the things you have said would hold true. However we are starting from an economy where trillions have already been taken out based on credit, and asset prices, my proposal is simply bridging the gap, between easy credit, and no credit. This was the intentional design of the original stimulus, my way is simply more efficient. With the amount of money that was already lost, and the lack of credit my proposal would not cause stagflation. Like i said earlier, it has to be based on a 2 year basis, so the hope is that demand catches up due to people being employed, because of the subsidy. For the record i support NO STIMULUS i just wanted to point out a more efficient way of doing it.
Fair enough (although I'm not making the assumption that we are starting from a strong economy). In that case, why not just cut everyone a check and skip the inefficiency created by creating these 'jobs' that are easily gamed? There's a legitimate argument to be made why cutting everyone a check doesn't work well: in a financial credit induced crisis, households are busy rebuilding their savings. If you cut them a check, they'll end up saving it and thus not create the marginal demand you need. Anyway, again - I in no way agree with what the administration is doing. Obama has, in my opinion, actually created a contractionary fiscal regime with his [politically motivated] focus on class warfare.
Again i will reiterate, i wanted no stimulus to begin with, however in my scenario, the hope is that these people will all have a job, and they will create demand, and a large majority of employers wont just lay people off once it is done. As opposed to handing people money where it is a 1 time thing. There is alot of companies in the tech age where increasing productivity can equate to increasing profits, so some would stay, but i understand your point. In terms of wage inflation you can fight that by severely lowering the amount of the stimulus and just adding year, over year as opposed to shooting your wad all at once. I never wanted the stimulus and i still dont, however what i wanted even less then the stimulus itself, was 800 billion going to bureaucrats. I would have also preffered your idea of just giving everyone a cheque, over giving these assholes money. My idea was just an idea to increase efficiency on a program which was a failure from the get go. Again i apologise for my response earlier, i have no problem debating people who are interested, i just couldnt make sense of what you said originally, and it seemed ass backwords, but it was my fault because i misunderstood what you were saying.