Top economists overwhelmingly back stimulus
Two important questions with relevance to the 2012 presidential campaign:
1.) Did the 2009 stimulus bill create jobs and lower the unemployment rate, or was it a waste of taxpayers’ money?
2.) In the final accounting, will the benefits of the Obama stimulus package end up outweighing its costs and risks?
The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business put those questions to more than 40 of the top economists in the country, representing a wide range of viewpoints.
(The Booth School itself, one of the most respected business schools in the country, has long been associated with a more conservative emphasis on free markets).
Here’s what they found:
“Question A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill. Agree or disagree?”
Eighty percent agreed. Four percent disagreed. And the two who disagreed acknowledged that they were far from certain in their opinion.
The results of the second question, while less overwhelming, were still strongly supportive of the policy:
“Question B: Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs. Agree or disagree?”
Forty-six percent agreed; just 12 percent disagreed. Another 29 percent said they were uncertain or ventured no opinion.
By a 4-1 margin, in a poll conducted by a respected institution with a conservative reputation, a cross section of the nation’s most respected economists believe that the stimulus would prove to be a net positive for the economy, even after it is paid back. By a margin of 20-1, they believe that it produced jobs and lowered the unemployment rate.
Of course, I understand that such things must be weighed against the fact that Rush and Sean have very different opinions.
– Jay Bookman
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© 2012 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
729 comments Add your comment
JOE Cool-Republicans Call Him MESSIAH, I Just Call Him Mr. President
February 21st, 2012
10:42 am
Socialist!!
mm
February 21st, 2012
10:42 am
First and foremost.
JOE Cool-Republicans Call Him MESSIAH, I Just Call Him Mr. President
February 21st, 2012
10:43 am
Almost mm…lol
mm
February 21st, 2012
10:43 am
Dreaded second.
Jay
February 21st, 2012
10:47 am
Don’t forget, mm:
Second place is first place among the losers!
JOE Cool-Republicans Call Him MESSIAH, I Just Call Him Mr. President
February 21st, 2012
10:48 am
Honestly, no matter how many economist you put up and all but 1 says it helped the Econ, all the CONs will mimic the same mess that it was failed. Everybody is an armchair economist because they can balance their checkbook..lol
Keep Up--Te gusta losing numb nutz?
February 21st, 2012
10:50 am
But Jay, surely you must know that so many of our expert economic posters have already proven that the stimulus did not work…. now why would you take the word of real experts over say the self-proclaimed expertise without credentials of those who post here. Is it that you are waiting a link to World Net Daily. Look now Pennsylvania is having to deal with a birther complaint like GA and the photo has Obama with FAIL across his head….now why would Obama pose like that. Surely them economists are just as wrong as Georgia on birth certificates.
TBone
February 21st, 2012
10:52 am
Coulda, woulda, shoulda … why do polls drive the news these days? Economics is a faux science, more like a guessing game. Keep propping do your daily due diligence.
Granny Godzilla
February 21st, 2012
10:52 am
Russian Sean has a different opinion?
Vodka for everybody!
Jefferson
February 21st, 2012
10:52 am
Tell it to Faux news, they are the gospel to the couch crowd.
Common Sense
February 21st, 2012
10:54 am
The only evidence you need that the stimulus did not work is that years after you keep searching out evidence that it has.
Remember, if the majority was right, the majority would be rich.
Mr. Snarky
February 21st, 2012
10:54 am
If they surveyed 40 economists, shouldn’t there be at least 80 opinions?
Just a little econ major humor to start your day.
Happy Kine and The Mirth Makers
February 21st, 2012
10:54 am
Well of course the stimuli was a great idea. An idea that saved the world, but wont save Obama.
Too bad…
Jimmy62
February 21st, 2012
10:56 am
These are the people who also advised the Fed to keep rates ridiculously low in the 2000’s, which is possibly the single largest factor in the rise and fall of the sub-prime economy.
Brosephus
February 21st, 2012
10:56 am
Well, I’m no trained economist, but I think the stimulus was flawed and would have been much more effective had it been targeted much better in a WPA styled program instead of trying to cut taxes and other stuff. A tax cut is fine and good when the economy has a leg or two. However, if one doesn’t have a job, cutting taxes does not help. I haven’t seen a tax cut yet that creates the demand necessary to cause hiring to increase. I’d wait a while to see the long term effects before I’ll say the stimulus was successful, but that’s just my opinion.
Steve
February 21st, 2012
10:57 am
I’m sure some conservative will proclaim that this “wasn’t Constitutional”!!
Midori
February 21st, 2012
10:58 am
TELEPROMPTER!!!
That goes for you too, mm
mm
February 21st, 2012
10:59 am
So I was eating breakfast at a very small diner last Friday. Evidently everyone there knows each other. The cook/owner asks one of the patrons if he has received 1 million in stimulus funds yet.
These people are ignorant, childish, and bad for our country. But the best part is, they will be silenced in November.
Mr. Snarky
February 21st, 2012
10:59 am
“The only evidence you need that the stimulus did not work is that years after you keep searching out evidence that it has.”
Ah yes. All truths are self evident…sounds like another embracer of “truthiness”.
Aquagirl
February 21st, 2012
10:59 am
Of course, I understand that such things must be weighed against the fact that Rush and Sean have very different opinions.
There’s a general disdain among Republicans for people who have spent years of their lives immersed in a subject. The GOP faithful have their talk-show hosts, google, and ginormous egos, a truly toxic combination.
Cosby
February 21st, 2012
10:59 am
Even Rosevelts Economist admitted years after the great depression all they did was spend a lot of money and only prolonged the depression…years after 2009/2009 Jay you are still trying to justify spending almost a trillion dollars which the taxpayer received nothing…just look at how it was spent – start with the green energy operations that went bankrupt..but wait, the owners / ionvestors presented king Obama with a lot of campaign cash..payback is great…and the real unemployment by the CBO is 16% now!! Great progress!!
Talking Head
February 21st, 2012
11:03 am
1.) Did the 2009 stimulus bill create jobs and lower the unemployment rate?
My Answer: My God I hope it did, we spent nearly $1 trillion on a plethora of subjects.
2.) In the final accounting, will the benefits of the Obama stimulus package end up outweighing its costs and risks?
My Answer: Like some of the economist in the survey said, there has not been enough time to see both the short term and long term impacts. What we do know is that this stimulus package added nearly $1 trillion to the national debt and we have not addressed how to pay for it. Additionally increasing the size of the government will require more revenue to continually fund these endeavors, and currently we are spending around 8% GDP more than we are taking in.
Midori
February 21st, 2012
11:03 am
Cosby,
was Roosevelt’s economist named Morgan Fairchild by any chance?
Billings
February 21st, 2012
11:03 am
Jimmy 62 nailed it @10:56. Fool me once, same on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
BlahBlahBlah
February 21st, 2012
11:04 am
Economists agree that printing money helps the economy. Shocking.
ByteMe
February 21st, 2012
11:04 am
Additionally increasing the size of the government will require more revenue to continually fund these endeavors
Not intended to be a factual statement. Look it up. Government employment continues to shrink.
Redneck Convert (R--and proud of it)
February 21st, 2012
11:05 am
Well, what we needed instead of the great waste of the Obama Stimulus was a Republican Stimulus. Now a Republican Stimulus would of give a bunch of money to private businesses, with a sort of hint that maybe they might ought to hire some people. If these businesses never hired anybody then they might put the money in their savings account and call it Capital Accumulation. Either way, we get jobs
in a few decades or a century or two.As it was the Obama stimulus sent money to real people that went off and wasted it on stuff like food and clothes and shelter or else it sent money to state guvmints that went and kept people on the job instead of firing them and making us all better off. Or else it sent money for states and towns to repair stuff like bridges that would of fell down anyway if we give them a little more time.
I hope next January the new Republican President will send so much stimulus money to businesses that they’ll be starting up new bulldozer cos. just to give these businesses a way to pile up the money and keep it from spilling over into the pockets of lazy working people that will just go out and blow it on food and clothes and shelter and such.
That’s my opinion and it’s very true. Have a good Fat Tuesday everybody. And just forget that suggestion I made downstairs. Heck, Granny and Paul done drug me through a cow pasture full of doo-doo over that. So keep your shirts on ladies.
ByteMe
February 21st, 2012
11:07 am
The 4% who disagree are the only ones who will show up on FOX News.
mm
February 21st, 2012
11:07 am
“just look at how it was spent – start with the green energy operations that went bankrupt..but wait, the owners / ionvestors presented king Obama with a lot of campaign cash..”
Not meant to be a factual statement.
Fred ™
February 21st, 2012
11:08 am
Brosephus
February 21st, 2012
10:56 am
Well, I’m no trained economist, but I think the stimulus was flawed and would have been much more effective had it been targeted much better in a WPA styled program instead of trying to cut taxes and other stuff. A tax cut is fine and good when the economy has a leg or two. However, if one doesn’t have a job, cutting taxes does not help. I haven’t seen a tax cut yet that creates the demand necessary to cause hiring to increase. I’d wait a while to see the long term effects before I’ll say the stimulus was successful, but that’s just my opinion.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What’choo talking bout Willis? Neal Boortz, Sean Hannidty, Rush Limbaugh, and their hordes of minion s who post here will ALL tell you that if you cut taxes on the “job creators” they will all start crapping jobs.
And look what happened. Taxes were cut and now we have a plethora of jobs. The only people now thta don’t have jobs are teh lazy slugs whom President Obama takes care of………
Stevie Ray
February 21st, 2012
11:08 am
JAY,
Did they ask those same economists if the cost per job at $185K per job is a great value? I’m wondering who paid for all this? Can you help a brother out?
Stevie Ray
February 21st, 2012
11:10 am
MM,
Investigate where $16 billion of the $20 billion of green stimulus cash went…..obama cronies and bundlers of course. Heck, he used the stimulus with Dem congress to pay back IOU’s in record time. Be careful with this hot potato…you will definitely get torched…your pal BO is as corrupt as the rest of them. Your taxpayer dollars at work eh?
Granny Godzilla
February 21st, 2012
11:11 am
Bro @ 10:56
I agree.
That’s why stuff like this made me a wee bit testy….
February 3, 2009
SENATE GOP BLOCKS ADDED INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT…. It got 58 votes, when proponents needed 60.
Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked Democrats from adding $25 billion for highways, mass transit, and water projects to President Barack Obama’s economic recovery program.
Already unhappy over the size of the measure, Republicans insisted additional infrastructure projects be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the bill. [...]
“We can’t add to the size of this bill,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. “The amount is just inconceivable to most people.”
Of course, whether the amounts are “conceivable” or not isn’t really the issue, is it? The last federal budget was more than $3 trillion. That amount may be “inconceivable to most people,” but Congress still passed it, and the president still signed it. As standards go, this isn’t especially reliable.
Besides, for a senator like Inhofe, the size isn’t really the issue anyway. It’s not like he’s prepared to support an $885 billion package, but a $925 billion package is just beyond the pale. He and his like-minded colleagues are going to vote against the recovery plan anyway.
As for the vote itself, there were 58 senators in support of the infrastructure expansion, including two Republicans (Specter and Bond). There were 39 votes against, and 38 were Republicans. The exception was Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana, who voted with the GOP and acknowledged afterwards that she’s “a bit in the doghouse right now” with her Democratic colleagues over her opposition to the amendment.
Washington Monthly
godless heathen©
February 21st, 2012
11:11 am
“Question A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill. Agree or disagree?”
If there were 2 more jobs created with the $745 billion, then the economists would have to agree.
Zedd
February 21st, 2012
11:11 am
And just think of how much more effective it could have been if we had not wasted money on things like a $3 million turtle crossing in FL, or the $10 million renovation of a train station that had been abandoned for 3 decades, or 10,000 dead people receiving Social Security stimulus checks, $1 million to build a guardrail around a nonexistent Oklahoma lake, nearly $600,000 for a New York town without a homeless problem to prevent homelessness, $90,000 grant for OU researchers to study how birds parent their offspring and compare that to human behavior, two scientific studies totaling close to $1 million on ants, $823,200 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex, and the list just goes on and on. What was the latest figure on how much was spent for each job saved or created again?
Talking Head
February 21st, 2012
11:11 am
“Additionally increasing the size of the government will require more revenue to continually fund these endeavors
Not intended to be a factual statement. Look it up. Government employment continues to shrink.”
I guess your comprehension doesn’t allow you to know that increasing the size of government doesn’t require additional government jobs.
jconservative
February 21st, 2012
11:12 am
Well we have had various stimulus plans since the days of “that man” Roosevelt. Economists have
generally been supportive of all the assorted stimulus plans. That is why we keep doing them.
My favorite was the stimulus of George W when he first took office. You know, the one where he mailed all us taxpayers a check from “The Surplus”.
You do remember “The Surplus”, right?
Finn McCool (Class Warfare = Stopping Rich People from TAKING MORE of OUR MONEY)
February 21st, 2012
11:12 am
You asking conservatives to take the long view?
Mwuahahahahahahaha
Mighty Righty
February 21st, 2012
11:12 am
I took my own survey of leading economists who said the stimulous actually harmed the economy in a way that will take many years to get over. They pointed out that since the stimulous this administration has spent more than three trillion dollars in borrowed money with no improvement in the economy. In fact the economy, by any measurement, is worse today in spite of economic policies that have vertually destroyed our future. They mentioned that next months unemployment numbers will be back to nine percent and that real unemploymnet is more than 18 percent. They also mentioned that with all the spending the country has no way of borrowing our way at of this mess. In addition, they believe that the administration’s lack of energy policy and no plan to improve employment could turn us into another european socialist economic failure. They see no hope unless Obama is replaced, and only then will there be even a slim chance of improvement because of the economic destruction done by the Obama administration to this country.
Keep Up--Te gusta losing numb nutz?
February 21st, 2012
11:12 am
if the cost per job at $185K per job is a great value
Because of course, when you build a bridge, there are no materials, its only labor and accordingly logic dictates that if a bridge costs $5 million and creates 5 jobs, the cost of those jobs is $1 mil each.
ByteMe
February 21st, 2012
11:13 am
if the cost per job at $185K per job is a great value
First you’d have to back up the fake cost number of $185K/job. Let’s see your homework.
JohnnyReb
February 21st, 2012
11:13 am
ARRA cost $787 billion. If the results were not better than without it, Obama would have long been run out of town on a rail. However, “better” means not much better.
The bottom line here is Jay, you have 40 economists where 32 agree in general terms we are better off with it than without it, and less than half agreed its benefits outweigh its cost.
This confirms what most on the Right already know. The stimulus as administered by Obama was a big political payback slush fund that permanently fixed nothing. Shovel ready was a joke – even Barry joked later about it. And too much of the money went to unions who feed it back to the DNC.
Makes me wonder why you posted this one?
Stevie Ray
February 21st, 2012
11:13 am
Let’s say the average salary of jobs saved (can’t be proved with W-2’s of course) and created by stimulus pay $100k each per $185k spent. Let’s calculate the payback in terms of taxes paid. Let’s assume 25% tax bracket so 25K fed tax per job….Payback only 7 years plus…what a deal!!!
Jay, do your numbers include or exclude government union jobs? I’m confused by the data on that point.
ByteMe
February 21st, 2012
11:14 am
I guess your comprehension doesn’t allow you to know that increasing the size of government doesn’t require additional government jobs.
I guess your comprehension of “increasing the size of government” is pure fantasy then.
Bruno
February 21st, 2012
11:14 am
By a 4-1 margin, in a poll conducted by a respected institution with a conservative reputation, a cross section of the nation’s most respected economists believe that the stimulus would prove to be a net positive for the economy
Or, by using the same polling data, one could generate a headline which says “Less than half of economists polled believe that the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs.” So which is the “truth”??
Of course, I understand that such things must be weighed against the fact that Rush and Sean have very different opinions.
Jay–If you want to know why less conservatives are participating in your blog, it is because of the childish, gratuitous comments which you feel compelled to add to virtually every column. In case you didn’t know, many respectable people hold opinions which are different from yours. But, rather than reaching out to the Cons so that you might enrich your own point of view, you have nothing but derision. Is your goal to stimulate discussion, or shut it down completely??
Stevie Ray
February 21st, 2012
11:15 am
BYTEME,
Why don’t you prove me wrong?
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/271107/white-house-nuh-uh-stimulus-jobs-only-cost-185k-each
AmVet - Just say no to the War Pigs.
February 21st, 2012
11:15 am
…a cross section of the nation’s most respected economists believe that the stimulus would prove to be a net positive for the economy…
That does not matter!
What matters is what does the esteemed vulcanologist/climatologist Mr. Limbaugh have to say on the matter?
Billings, did you ever mess that up!
Here’s how it really goes… Courtesy of the (W)orst voters ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A
Tommy Maddox
February 21st, 2012
11:16 am
Well, Gallup is reporting today that unemployment is at 9% and underemployment is at 19%.
So, to answer your two questions – No.
ByteMe
February 21st, 2012
11:16 am
The bottom line here is Jay, you have 40 economists where 32 agree in general terms we are better off with it than without it, and less than half agreed its benefits outweigh its cost.
Hmm… 4% of ~40 is 8, Johnny?
ragnar danneskjold
February 21st, 2012
11:17 am
Thanks goodness for credentials, since there is no intelligent argument in favor of the leftist perspectives here.