The stimulus was worth it

ARTICLE: New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step, By JACKIE CALMES and MICHAEL COOPER, New York Times, November 20, 2009

The emerging consensus on the correctness of pursuing the stimulus.

Comments

[Mark]

Consensus was the earth was flat.Just because "everyone" agrees does not mean they are correct.

Leave it be to find its own level and let it fix itself or not. More government is not the answer and spending MORE money doesn't seem to make sense.

[joe]

If the stimulus proponents have some data to prove their claims, then publish the data and have it peer reviewed. That fact will be self evident.

Claims reported in the article are hard to prove,

"Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.” "

There are large number of economists who disagree. Publish the data and prove your claim.

I do believe that a few 10,000's of government jobs were saved and a few 1000's even created. But how many millions have been lost due to the current economic and political uncertainty?

[Andrew in DC]

If the article had come from Mises.org with a similar conclusion I might have been surprised and have to re-evaluate my stance on this. However, the NYT? There's a reason it's not my first source for economic analysis. The biggest point? Most of the jobs were "saved" and most of those were government jobs to begin with. Not exactly the foundation for a robust recovery.

[Richard Spencer]

I was an adjunct professor in an MBA program for several years and my students searched high an low for one peer reviewed article that had even a remote mention of a successful Keynesian pork bill any place during the history of the world. I also asked my Senator to send me the same information he must have secured in order to vote for it. Well, my students came up empty and I have not heard from the Senators. Funny, I haven't.