New $50 Billion Dollar Stimulus/Infrastructure Plan!!! - Page 3 - Politics and Economics

I know investing in infrastructure is pretty much page one of the government stimulus handbook that has been used for the last 100+ years, but it doesn't really deliver the same employment bang for the buck that it did in the past.

Technology has replaced the hundreds of men with shovels with giant machines that require a handful of people to operate. There is no such thing as a "shovel ready" project anymore.

09-07-2010 , 08:00 AM

#53

T50_Omaha8

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 5,741

Quote:

Originally Posted by Effen

for reference, polls seem to be under 1000 people most of the time. Quinnipiac (local school) does a lot of these, I'm fairly familiar with the subject. I can find 1000 people to favor Bush over Obama 90-10, and 1000 people to favor Obama over Bush 90-10 within a 20 mile radius in Fairfield County here in Connecticut.

Yes, but the probability of selecting such a sample randomly is basically zero.

09-07-2010 , 08:02 AM

#54

T50_Omaha8

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 5,741

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZeroPointMachine

Construction is still a very labor-intensive industry.

09-07-2010 , 08:03 AM

#55

ikestoys

banned

Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 94,424

Quote:

Originally Posted by Effen

Hey look guise, it's someone who doesn't know how polls work! Must be fun to use that ignorance to try to make an argument.

09-07-2010 , 08:15 AM

#56

JayTeeMe

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I dunno ikes, he's "fairly familiar with the subject"...

09-07-2010 , 08:16 AM

#57

nick_van_exel

banned

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 1,272

Quote:

Originally Posted by Effen

please don't ever post about polls like they're meaningful again.

Politicians and partisans always hate polls when they are not in their favor and flaunt them when they are. American's have buyers remorse and 50 billion dollar high speed rail stimulus is not helping.

09-07-2010 , 08:18 AM

#58

ikestoys

banned

Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 94,424

I don't mean to say this poll is gospel, but it is pretty funny. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to criticize it, but the I could pick 1000 people to pick Obama 9-1 is not a valid one, and that tactic reeks of desperation.

09-07-2010 , 09:09 AM

#59

tubasteve

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 14,283

Quote:

Originally Posted by steelhouse

There is nothing wrong with spending money on the roads and bullet trains if the people want them. First of all the roads should be paid by the city and states via gas taxes and train tickets. But, these clowns, decide to tax savers to pay for their projects. They are too much cowards to tax people direct so they just go into deficit and spend the money. They issue bonds and if no one wants them the fed will buy them. They spend unlimited amounts and it is a running joke who gets to steal more while in office the democrats or the republicans. Obama, is it not time to resign yet.

As for private roads, that is a total joke. I went to San Diego and they have 2 freeways side by side a private toll road and a public I15 road. Talk about some dildoe that came up with that scheme to steal money. Very simply all roads and power lines should be owned by the government and built and maintained by private low-bid contractors.

how is a toll road a scheme to steal money? no one has to use it. and have you ever considered that there might be people that are happy that they could just pay $10 or whatever and skip all the traffic? it isn't costing you anything, idk you just sound ******ed here.

09-07-2010 , 09:25 AM

#60

The 13th 4postle

banned

Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 11,244

Quote:

Originally Posted by Effen

09-07-2010 , 10:21 AM

#61

tubasteve

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 14,283

that gif is amazing haha

09-07-2010 , 11:17 AM

#62

Brian J

TOTP Master

Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 10,650

Quote:

Originally Posted by Effen

it's always a sure sign of defeat when you start pissing on the polls

09-07-2010 , 12:44 PM

#63

Effen

CRAB

Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 24,004

Quote:

Originally Posted by ikestoys

Not by asking them beforehand obviously, but by going into certain neighborhoods and polling that area with the favorable demographic to what I want to accomplish, yeah, I can manipulate a poll to say lots of things I might want.

I assume everyone knows the breakdown of the poll in regards to race, sex, income, age, location, and so on. I don't, which is why I assume such a ridiculous result in comparison to, oh, how almost the entire country would answer would have to have some serious outliers or be really flawed in either composition or the way the question was asked.

I'm also going to assume everyone knows this and the joke is on me or something.

Carry on.

09-07-2010 , 01:39 PM

#64

The 13th 4postle

banned

Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 11,244

Effen, you just don't know how a poll works. Yeah, I bet you could go to certain neighborhoods and manipulate a poll like that. But pollsters such as Quinnipiac don't do that. They usually just start calling phone numbers randomly until they get a number of registered or likely voters they are satisfied with. You don't even need 600 LV in order to get an accurate poll.

For example, let's take Florida. If you call phone numbers within the state randomly. You'll call numbers from all over the state and get calls from Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. This will be a representative sample of the population. The more people you poll the smaller the Margin of Error gets. The difference between the MOE from 500 to 600 is greater than the difference between the MOE from 600 to 700 and so on. But the MOE only gets a little bit smaller at this point and it's usually not worth much effort then that. The MOE simply represents that with the sample we have, 95% of the time, the true opinion of the population resides within the MOE.

09-07-2010 , 01:55 PM

#65

adios

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Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 22,530

Quote:

Originally Posted by The 13th 4postle

Paul Krugman made the statement on Sunday's This Week that we don't don't have a structural problem with economy we just have a Demand problem ldo. I wanna kick him in the nuts.

What does he mean by structural problem?

09-07-2010 , 01:57 PM

#66

adios

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Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 22,530

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dynasty

A $50 billion spending bill seems like it would little positive impact on the ecomomy before November even if it worked exactly as President Obama hopes.

However, it feeds right into the Republicans criticism that the Democrats are just a bunch of tax-and-spend liberals.

Politically, my first impression is that this is incredibly foolish.

It's more of the same central planning the economy approach with picking winners and losers tossed in. It's the same crap that the leftists have been promoting for as long as I can remember.

09-07-2010 , 04:33 PM

#67

CharlieDontSurf

Blessed by Pope

Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 14,811

Quote:

Originally Posted by The 13th 4postle

All that poll says is "People are Dumb".

09-07-2010 , 11:22 PM

#68

ikestoys

banned

Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 94,424

Quote:

Originally Posted by Effen

At least you clearly illustrate that the only reason you don't believe the poll is the fact you don't agree with the result. You might want to try educating yourself some about polling though.

btw, the poll was run by a Dem outfit

09-08-2010 , 05:47 AM

#69

O.A.F.K.1.1

Ted Patrick

Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 27,952

Quote:

Originally Posted by adios

What does he mean by structural problem?

There is no inherent problem with the structure of the economy, e.g. the configuration of labour and capital and the activities arising thereby.

The counter arguement is that debt/guberment etc has distorted the structure of the economy and there are big problems with the activities arising thereby, e.g. they dont add value, are unsustainable with out stimulus/consumer debt ect ect.

09-09-2010 , 12:52 PM

#70

J.R.

Econ Forum Czar

Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 8,292

Quote:

Originally Posted by adios

What does he mean by structural problem?

a big structural problem idea:

Quote:

I-America has a Structural problem, not a cyclical business cycle problem. Though the cyclical business cycle was greatly worsened by the financial crisis, I would argue that the structural problem facing the US is actually a contributor to what caused the financial crisis.

...

Quote:

A STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

1) Trade Balance: Insufficient Export/Import Ratio

We are all painfully aware that the US has not produced sufficient exportable product to support its standard of living for many years. Manufacturing in the US has been in steady decline since the 1960’s and the excess spending during the Vietnam War. It has been 50 years since the US had a balanced budget (forget Clinton's social security slight of hand). Over the last 10-15 years the US has seriously compounded this problem by accelerating the de-industrializaton of America without a strategy to replace salable export product. Corporate industrial strategies of outsourcing, downsizing, and off-shoring were never countered other than by an excess consumption splurge which fostered massive real estate and retail expansion distortions.
(Manufacturing Employment As A Percent Of Employment USGOVT MANEMP/PAYNSA)

...

This exorbitant privilege of recycling US dollars for real goods and back into its domestic assets markets (stuff like treasuries, corporate debt, agency paper and equities) isn't sustainable. Agency paper is already crushed.

Quote:

For a brief period of time following the dotcom implosion, the US operated as a mercantile “Financial Economy” that turned out to have been nothing more than a historic illusion.

09-09-2010 , 12:59 PM

#71

J.R.

Econ Forum Czar

Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 8,292

Quote:

This week the Obama administration lays out its plans to further "stimulate" the economy. In particular, the president unveiled his proposals for $50 billion more in infrastructure spending, and a $100 billion extension to a tax credit on research and development.
...
As explained in this CNN story, in his Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, "Obama unveiled a $50 billion infrastructure plan to try and create jobs over the long-term by rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of rail, and 150 miles of airport runways." The rationale behind the plan is the simple Keynesian notion that government spending can "fill the gap" in aggregate demand when private businesses and individuals are unwilling to spend enough to keep everyone employed.

...

First problem = confusing low unemployment with healthy economy

Quote:

There are several problems with this common approach. In the first place, it confuses a low unemployment rate with "a healthy economy." Now, it's true that a high unemployment rate goes hand in hand with a sick economy. But the unemployment rate is a symptom of the underlying structural problem. Government efforts to "reduce unemployment" are, at best, like putting ice cubes on a thermometer to treat a fever.

For example, most pundits accept the claim that "World War II got us out of the Depression." And it's true that the official unemployment rate dropped like a stone with US entry into the war. But as economic historian Bob Higgs points out, FDR had hardly "fixed" the economy: all he did was force millions of American men to leave the conventional workforce and jump into a slaughterhouse. By the same token, if President Obama made it mandatory for five million Americans to cross the ocean and paint the Great Wall of China, it's possible that the official unemployment rate would drop.

Second problem: its not clear at all, even accepting that we want to "create jobs," that stimulus achieves this. Even mainstream economists, some using econometric techniques, doubt stimulus theory.

Quote:

Beyond this fundamental confusion, there is another problem with government "stimulus" spending. Simply put, the money has to come from somewhere, and it's not at all obvious that the net result leads to job creation, even if we accept jobs as indicators of a healthy economy.
...

But even mainstream economists have challenged the Keynesians on their own turf. Using standard econometric techniques, many prominent economists have found little evidence that government spending boosts economic output, even if we accept the standard government figures at face value.

Some readers may be surprised to see this, because self-described progressive pundits often claim that only a Neanderthal could possibly doubt the scientific case for government stimulus spending. Yet, as Jim Manzi explained when The New Republic's Jonathan Chait made such a claim,

Quote:

Robert Barro, Professor of Economics at Harvard, John Cochrane, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, and Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, have each separately argued that it is somewhere between plausible and likely that the multiplier for stimulus spending under relevant conditions is indistinguishable from zero (i.e., that stimulative spending will not materially increase economic output). According to surveys of professional economists reported by Greg Mankiw, about 10 percent of economists do not agree with the statement that "Fiscal policy (e.g., tax cut and/or government expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy." Both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have run opinion columns expressing the view that a multiplier of zero is a plausible to likely theory.

I have not been afraid to call out influential conservative activists when I believe they are engaging in crank refusal to accept a scientific finding. But in a genuinely scientific field which has accepted a predictive rule as valid to the point that there is a true consensus — such that the only reason for refusal to accept it is crankery or, in Chait's terms, "politics" — you don't usually see: several full professors at the top two departments in the subject, when speaking directly in their area of research expertise, challenge it; 10 percent of all practitioners in the field refuse to accept it; and the two leading global general circulation publications in field running op-eds questioning it.

...

Quote:

The context for Manzi's argument with Chait was the embarrassing predicament that Keynesians had gotten themselves into after the first Obama stimulus package. The Obama team had famously predicted that, with the package, unemployment would not break 8 percent — a projection that of course turned out to be rather optimistic.

The Keynesian response, of course, has been that the economy was worse than people realized at the start of the Obama presidency. And it's true that we can't prove that the original $800 billion stimulus package made things worse. But my point is, there are plenty of theoretical arguments — both Austrian and mainstream — questioning the Keynesian claims, and recent history suggests a prima facie confirmation of these doubts.

Stimulus? Yet Again?

09-09-2010 , 02:32 PM

#72

Almond

centurion

Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 198

Thought today's Investors Business Daily article is correct:

Use Of Gov't Spending As Stimulus Throws Sand In Gears Of Growth

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnal...-Of-Growth.htm

And as Michelle Malkin pointed out, the proposed infrastructure project is another big Union boondoggle payoff.

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/09/08...g-boondoggles/

09-09-2010 , 11:58 PM

#73

freedom.fries

old hand

Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 1,730

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