The Stimulus in Review: The 9 Best Studies Compiled

Facepalm.

So you guys just take everything Woozy says at face value because he writes it in an assertive, aggressive way, huh? Notwithstanding that his views are, to put it mildly, way outside of the mainstream, and the people he's dismissing are much smarter than he is in this discipline? Pro tip: it is fallacious to say "X person is smarter than Woozy, so don't listen to Woozy". It is equally fallacious to say "X person works for Y government agency  / writes for Z publication, so don't listen to X person." The unbelievable arrogance it takes to write something like that in effectively so many words is staggering, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Woozy has neither the letters after his name nor the nobel-prize level accomplishments to warrant such arrogance. That is completely separate from his point.

The purpose of this thread was to relay 9 studies which had been conducted, without partisan filter on any of them, and you can take from them what you will. Perhaps the correct response is "well, the majority of these studies suggest that the stimulus had a measurably positive effect - that is a good sign." Perhaps, instead, the correct response here is, "we just spent ridiculous amounts of money on this. The fact that when looked at from some angles it has been only marginally successful is a damning indictment and suggests that it was a complete waste of money". More likely, it is somewhere in between - which is closer? I'm still not sure, but the foregoing is food for thought (as are Woozy's posts, once you strip the bullshit off of them).

In any case, the correct response is certainly not what I'm reading in here, which is essentially intellectual bullying - "fuck you, here's my position, if you disagree you're an idiot, just like all those guys (who, of course, aren't here to defend their positions and poke holes in my own)". That is essentially an argumentative strategy aimed at winning over those who are too lazy to read and consider the different perspectives, preferring "this guy seems confident, I'll go with what he said". It's amateurish and only highlights that your views can't stand on their own merits. The applause it produces from sycophants like the artist formerly known as The_Salcedo is pretty damned hollow.

Here is where I say "but". Ultimately, I don't necessarily disagree with Woozy's underlying rejection of the idea that positive studies as to effects of stimulus means stimulus = success. One of the better (negative) responses to this collection I have read was as follows:

I have two economic goals:

1) Reduce the amount of effort and skills that are needed to achieve self-sufficiency and comfort.

2) Facilitating the production and development of goods and services that increase standards of living.

Did the stimulus make it easier for Joe Six Pack to find self-sustaining work? Not really, judging by the amount of them out of work. At best, the stimulus provided Joe a temporary paycheck by allowing him to do work that nobody in society was asking him to do. In other words, it's basically wealth redistribution, so asking if that "works" is the same as asking whether you support welfare, which introduces subjective values like equality and reduced suffering.

Did the stimulus produce anything that improves our standards of living? Not that I'm aware, at least not compared with the cost. Fixing potholes is fine, but "growth" in the quantity of economic activity doesn't really mean much if the growth is due to an output of goods and services that aren't in demand. Paying people to bang on pots and pans may increase our GDP, but it's a total farce if the government is arbitrarily assessing the value for that work. All that noise is only going to make life easier for the people getting paid to do it, and my idea of a functioning economy doesn't include a growing dependence on taxpayer coffers for people to sustain themselves.

If those experts were asking to measure those two questions, I doubt they'd come up with the same conclusions.

The linked compilation does not somehow provide an "end of the debate" answer to whether the stimulus was a good or bad idea. That is impossible to measure unless you somehow have access to an alternative version of reality in which there was no stimulus and can compare that world to ours. Future events will necessitate a revision of these findings. However, the wholescale rejection of the stimulus as the work of satan from one side, and its warm embrace as the financial savior of the entire developed world by the other, are both nonsense, and pretty much any rational person reading the item linked in the OP would agree.

Two straw men in two sentences. I never said either of those things.

Another straw man. I don't believe I said anything about the broken window fallacy you posted - as a matter of fact I think it's tangential. I do believe that any predictive model using 1922 as a control will produce results that wildly differ from the realities of 100 years later. There are, to use the understatement of the century, a lot of variables that have either changed dramatically or popped up in the interim - not just "TVs and Ipods". That's hardly a controversial statement. So no, I don't think a reference to 1922 is going to be terribly helpful. Somewhat helpful at a first-principles level, sure.

I think the problem you're having, struggling to reject my argument as to why you're wrong, is that I didn't say you were necessarily wrong.

I don't understand how you can possibly hope to present a coherent argument if this is the extent to which you're acquainted with basic modal logic. There is nothing in your premise that supports your conclusion.

Premise: JD says, reading the above compilation of studies will lead one to the conclusion that the stimulus had many positive, measurable effects on the economy, unless one is a complete nimrod. Please note that this premise does not say "JD says if you read the article, you will wave around a giant foam hand that reads "STIMULUS #1".

Conclusion: From this, I have taken that JD means that I am ONLY allowed to consider the above studies, and not present any other viewpoints, and not take anything else into account.

I note that you also ignored the fact that I quoted with approval someone who pointed out what was not focussed on in the studies, and argued that if it had been the results would have been different. Doesn't this run completely contrary to your conclusion?

I certainly fail to accept it, because they are analyzing a program with massive, widespread effects at a local, regional, state, federal and international level. The sheer magnitude of the rock that was dropped in the pond here is such that no study could really hope to capture all of it, even making the presumptions of a particular theoretical perspective. That said, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the conclusions of a series of studies cannot be swatted away by a 2 minute youtube video about a baker's window (which, incidentally, was intended as an analogy to major catastrophic events by human actors, not a financial collapse). It's a house of cards.

Forget the hypothetical. The basic hypothesis appears to be that, had the money not been spent on stimulus, it could have been spent to better effect elsewhere. Is that what you're saying here?

As an addendum, you appear to be saying that spending cuts would have actually had a positive effect on unemployment numbers based entirely on the predictive model that is 1922. As noted I don't agree with your basis for that conclusion.

By the way, the "broken window fallacy" is intended to operate as a simplistic counter-argument to the notion that harmful events can ultimately prove beneficial to the economy by, for lack of a better term, kick-starting certain spending that otherwise would not have occurred. I.e., 9/11 is terrible, but may motivate the following activities which are economically beneficial. Without actually addressing either side of that debate, that is clearly what the debate at issue in that youtube video actually IS.

If you were to attempt to apply that here, you would effectively be arguing against the notion that the GFC might have positive effects on the economy. No one is stupid enough to be making that argument, hence applying the "fallacy" (intentionally in quotation marks) is in itself fallacious. Again, I think your attempt to apply it is tangential. The general uselessness of these oversimplified anecdotes aside, it just doesn't address what we're talking about as far as I can see.

I will ignore your baiting as I have already addressed your "fallacy". It cannot be proven to be a "fallacy" as it was presented there. Fallacies are expressed not as stories, but as equations.

No - I am not sure there IS a solution to the unemployment problem that can be effected by government. That being said, I am not sure that further stimulus is a bad idea. When looked at from a cost-benefit standpoint, the foregoing studies may suggest that the immediate benefit outweighs the long-term cost and is justifiable in light of the alternatives (including complacency).

Yes - your last two posts in this thread have been essentially ad hominem, i.e. "you worship keynesian economists and obviously haven't studied econ like I have". Note that I am not tacitly agreeing that keynesian is a bad word. I would posit from this that you are currently studying econ in university.

The second part of your post is once again a straw man. I didn't say that I thought more stimulus was a good idea. I said that I was not yet convinced that it was a bad idea. You seem to enjoy putting words in peoples' mouths.

"There is nothing further to say after X" is a massive cop-out that essentially translates to "I have nothing further I can contribute". I don't think anyone else was fooled, but I'll just point that out in the event that you were fooling yourself.

I would note that your attempt to ascribe this or any other economic theory to my posts in this thread, in which I've remained more or less completely neutral on absolutely everything in a positive sense (i.e. I have not expressed a definitive viewpoint, only questioned yours) is inexplicable.

This is indicative of your apparent argumentative strategy throughout, which I pointed out in my original post - i.e., instead of actually supporting the merits of your views, you try to make anyone who disagrees with you into a witch. Simultaneously, you try to take a neutral word ("Keynesian") and turn it into a dirty word, in much the same way right-wing politicians have effectively dirtied the word "Liberal". That, again, is a house of cards - it's not intellectually honest debate, it's demagogue's politics.

Well, "flat earth" theory is one that can be scientifically proven to be objectively inaccurate. Keynesian economics, meanwhile, can at worst be accused of being horrendously non-predictive of real-world results. As with all economic, philosophical, moral and other social theories, no matter how many flaws it may have, its application to a given set of facts inevitably produces illuminating results when properly interpreted. To use a bad analogy (since that seems to be a favourite pastime in this thread), just because utilitarianism has had nail after nail pounded into its coffin, does not mean that it is a useless basis on which to evaluate a proposal. That is what "neutral" means.

Well, first as to the ad hominem (fallacy numero uno in this post, making about 50 for this thread in total). I am a corporate lawyer, and I went to a law school in Canada - hence it is not second tier or first tier. There are fewer than a dozen law schools here, and no tiering. Again, none of this is relevant, but just for your information.

Second, the notion that the two of you study economics in college is not impressing anyone, and even if it were, the notion that we should defer to you on that basis is (yet again) fallacious (#2). Amusingly it is fallacious in exactly the same way Woozy called someone out on earlier. You also committed the inverse fallacy later in your post (i.e. accusing me of having no frame of reference because I didn't study econ in undergrad like you two mavens), but given the similarity, we can charitably just lump those two together.

Third, no one accepted anyone's words as gospel, much less myself. Your casting those words as similar to Andersen re: enron is fallacious (#3). It's obviously not a false parallel, and disingenuous, but even if it were it would still be ad hominem.

Nor did I attempt to "disprove" the BFC - I merely stated that it seems overly simplistic to me and inapplicable to the current situation. Straw man there (#4) That shouldn't be surprising, as it's a simplistic hypothetical which wasn't cast in such a way as to address a financial collapse. But please, feel free to take the underlying premise of the BFC and show exactly how it applies.

Fourth, it hardly even needs to be said that the fact that I'm Canadian is irrelevant and to suggest that it somehow diminishes the extent to which my perspective (I'm still puzzled as to how you've managed to identify same given the fact that I haven't really expressed one in any firm way) is, once again, fallacious (#5).

Given the amount of "fallacy" talk in here you guys should really be a bit more careful about the way you toss accusations and hollow arguments around. The post I just quoted is essentially a lot of words that aren't saying anything supportable.

This is a cop-out. Obviously, I do not have this in front of me. Nor would it explain how said BFC applies to the discussion currently ongoing. Which is why, since you have accused me of not understanding it, I am asking you to enlighten us all by elaborating on this theory yourself and connect the dots so as to shine some light on how it applies to GFC / Stimulus. The youtube video itself, again, is structured so as to address the argument that catastrophic events having negative consequences may also spur economic activity by individual actors, so that, on balance, they may in fact be economically positive. The reason it does not appear to apply, when structured in that way, is that no one is arguing that the global economic crisis may in fact be economically positive. That's not what's at stake in this debate. However, if you can re-frame this theory so that it DOES apply I would love to hear that.

This is true of all social sciences, man. As Salcedo noted I studied philosophy in undergrad - I studied law afterwards. In both areas, obviously, there have been innumerable theories in a variety of disciplines, none of which can ever be objectively discounted. Over time, some are shown to be flawed for myriad reasons. However, they remain and are still studied, rather than thrown in the trash, because flawed or no their results are illuminating when placed in the larger context.

And again, I am not tacitly acknowledging in saying the above that I agree the same analysis applies to 9 leading studies on the stimulus; the foregoing is merely my response to your general observations about social sciences.