I’m not clear on how that’s relevant to whether we should blame him for an unemployment rate that started climbing over a year ago, long before he took office.
gahrie
President Obama’s pride and joy , the stimulus bill, was designed to keep unemployment from going higher than 8%. He promised that in order to get it passed. But yet he’s not supposed to be held accountable when unemployment rises to 9.5%.
Yet when the business cycle reaches completion and unemployment goes down, we will all be told it is because of The One’s actions….
David K.
Umm considering that the stimulus money has mostly not been spent yet on projects its going to be used for, only an idiot would use it as criticism at this point. It’s like going to your doctor and complaining that your antibiotics haven’t worked when you just started taking them.
gahrie
You mean to say that the money wasn’t spent on projects that were “shovel ready” like they said? The money actually went to pay for Democratic pay offs and projects that had been held up for the previous eight years?
First of all, he didn’t promise unemployment would never go higher than 8%. You are flat out lying there. The Whitehouse made a projection about unemployment with the stimulus package which did not hold to be true, but that’s not even close to lying.
In no universe is it Obama’s fault that unemployment is 9.5%. You could attempt to claim that the stimulus did nothing (you’d be demonstrably wrong) or attempt to claim that the cost of the stimulus was more than we received in benefit (I’d disagree, but it’s at least a feasible position) but again, in no universe is Obama responsible for the 9.5% unemployment.
Look at the graph of unemployment. Look at the rate of change. What is the rate of change under the last year of the Bush administration, and what is the rate of change under the current Obama administration? Note that I’m not blaming Bush here, just pointing out that it *can’t* be Obama’s fault, statistically.
In regards to shovel ready projects, what is happening is *exactly* what was expected, that stimulus money would be pushed out to projects over the spring and summer. There’s nothing new about that. There are no Democratic pay offs here.
Brendan Loy
Gahrie, this line of thought is a classic example of the fundamentally dishonest, easily disprovable falsehoods that are currently passing for mainstream thought on the Right. It’s immensely frustrating because, underneath all the bullshit, you MAY have a valid point. But not for the reasons you state. The notion that “Obama said unemployment would be 8%, instead it’s 9.5%, therefore STIMULUS FAIL!!!” is simply unsupportable.
The following is a fact: the reason the unemployment numbers are higher than projected is because more jobs were lost in the FIRST QUARTER — January, February and March — than economists expected when those projections were being created. Obviously, no one expected the stimulus to have an impact until the second quarter at the earliest, so you can’t blame the stimulus for the bad first-quarter numbers. Yet those bad first-quarter numbers put us on a trajectory where unemployment’s peak was inevitably going to be worse than we hoped back in January and February, when the stimulus was being debated.
Now, was the stimulus oversold to the American people? Has it not worked as well as advertised? Do its benefits pale in comparison to its costs? Maybe. You can make reasonable arguments on all of those points. You can claim that unemployment, although it inevitably peaked higher than expected, should have started falling by now, or at least that its rate of increase should have fallen more than it has. Those arguments are within the realm of rational, honest discourse. But you cannot reasonably use the mere fact that unemployment has reached 9.5%, contrary to the pre-stimulus estimates, as PROOF POSITIVE that the stimulus has FAILED.
Yet that’s exactly what you are doing, and it’s exactly what conservatives from sea to shining sea are doing. It’s a fundamentally dishonest argument that ignores basic, obvious, undeniable facts. That’s a shame, because it would be nice if we had some grownups making the case against Obama’s policies and promoting a sensible alternative. But we don’t. Instead we have a bunch of fibbing five-year-olds dominating discourse on the Right. It’s a sad state of affairs, and you’re part of it.
We’re now at the very beginning of 2009Q3; [the projections] predicted that the unemployment rate right now would be only a fraction of a percent lower now than it would otherwise be. The impact wasn’t supposed to be really noticeable until late this year, and wasn’t supposed to peak until late 2010.
The problem, in other words, is not that the stimulus is working more slowly than expected; it was never expected to do very much this soon. The problem, instead, is that the hole the stimulus needs to fill is much bigger than predicted.
I realize you’re going to jump up and down saying it’s Paul Krugman and so it doesn’t matter, but these are not opinions he is stating — these are facts. I don’t necessarily agree with his advocacy of a “second stimulus” (that, of course, is an opinion), but there is no basis upon which I, or anyone else, can disagree with the core statistical fact that the stimulus wasn’t expect to do much by now, and the “bigger hole” that the stimulus must fill (as reflected on this chart) reflects NOT the “failure” of the stimulus, but rather the worsening of conditions during the first quarter of 2009, before the stimulus could possibly have had any effect.
Obama’s critics are entitled to their opinions. They’re not entitled to their own facts. If only they realized this.
dcl
But Brendan, you are just falling into the liberal fallacy of a fact based discourse. This is a major error when debating a Republican as the Bush administration’s media advisors pointed out, while you are busy dealing with a fact based world we are moving the playing field about and changing the facts. Or something like that, I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to look it up.
Joe Mama
The unemployment rate as it stands now is not proof that the stimulus bill has failed, but it does prove that the Obama administration was wrong when it forecast that the unemployment rate would not exceed 8% if the bill was passed, and that they were obviously wrong to confidently stress that as one of the key selling points of the stimulus if they knew the data they were using had such a wide margin for error or if there was data that they weren’t factoring into their predictions that could significantly undercut those predictions when it became available.
Needless to say, the error doesn’t do much for the administration’s credibility when it comes to other jobs predictions, especially when Obama insists on making utterly specious claims about the number of jobs “saved” by the stimulus bill, which crazy right-wingers like the Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee admit are meaningless because they are unverifiable. Where ever the unemployment rate peaks, the administration can simply claim it would’ve been so many percentage points higher without the stimulus bill and there is no way to prove or disprove the claim, so it’s completely bogus.
I suspect that the well-everybody-thought-the-economy-was-thus-and-such excuse will go over about as well as Bush’s well-everybody-thought-Iraq-had-WMDs excuse, which is perfectly fine with me. Bush never “promised” that Iraq had WMDs either. As someone who repeatedly tried to explain to fibbing five-year-olds over the last 6 years the difference between being mistaken and lying, all I can say to the Obama supporters is . . . good luck and God bless.
Brendan Loy
And as someone who likewise defended Bush from charges that he “lied,” all I can say to Bush defenders / Obama critics is: you are a bunch of bloody hypocrites.
Brendan Loy
“Where ever the unemployment rate peaks, the administration can simply claim it would’ve been so many percentage points higher without the stimulus bill and there is no way to prove or disprove the claim, so it’s completely bogus.”
The fact that something is not susceptible for proof or disproof does NOT make it “completely bogus.” It is entirely possible that this unverifiable claim would be correct. Conversely, it might be incorrect. But it’s a counterfactual, and, like all counterfactuals, it cannot be proven one way or the other. That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.
I understand your frustration — dealing with unverifiable claims is never fun — but you’re overstating your case when you assert that such claims are “completely bogus.” What makes economics so frustrating, at least to me, is that it’s so complex, claims by either side can rarely be definitively “proven” or “disproven.” That’s why we’re still arguing over whether the New Deal was good or bad, for chrissakes. Clearly, it was either good or it was bad — SOMEONE is right — but neither side can definitively “prove” it.
Joe Mama
all I can say to Bush defenders / Obama critics is: you are a bunch of bloody hypocrites.
Yep, but they certainly ain’t the only ones.
The fact that something is not susceptible for proof or disproof does NOT make it “completely bogus.” It is entirely possible that this unverifiable claim would be correct. Conversely, it might be incorrect. But it’s a counterfactual, and, like all counterfactuals, it cannot be proven one way or the other. That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.
Right, the assertion might not necessarily be incorrect, but it gets Obama exactly nowhere in terms of establishing the efficacy of his policy, which was my point. Feel free to substitute “hollow” or “worthless” in place of “bogus” to get my drift. Or let me put it another way that is more palatable: it’s no different than Bush claiming that his policies made America safer than the country would have been without them.
9.5 percent unemployment. Happy Freakin’ 4th of July.
Sounds like more stimulus money would be the perfect fix.
I have a better idea…let’s drastically raise the cost of energy so that everything costs more to make, ship etc…………
Mission Accomplished
Amazing. Over 30 comments on Palin resigning and nothing here. And they call us partisan. Sheesh.
I suppose we should all come in here and blame the unemployment rate on Obama?
Well, many of you will be praising him when it eventually comes down…….
I’m not clear on how that’s relevant to whether we should blame him for an unemployment rate that started climbing over a year ago, long before he took office.
President Obama’s pride and joy , the stimulus bill, was designed to keep unemployment from going higher than 8%. He promised that in order to get it passed. But yet he’s not supposed to be held accountable when unemployment rises to 9.5%.
Yet when the business cycle reaches completion and unemployment goes down, we will all be told it is because of The One’s actions….
Umm considering that the stimulus money has mostly not been spent yet on projects its going to be used for, only an idiot would use it as criticism at this point. It’s like going to your doctor and complaining that your antibiotics haven’t worked when you just started taking them.
You mean to say that the money wasn’t spent on projects that were “shovel ready” like they said? The money actually went to pay for Democratic pay offs and projects that had been held up for the previous eight years?
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
First of all, he didn’t promise unemployment would never go higher than 8%. You are flat out lying there. The Whitehouse made a projection about unemployment with the stimulus package which did not hold to be true, but that’s not even close to lying.
In no universe is it Obama’s fault that unemployment is 9.5%. You could attempt to claim that the stimulus did nothing (you’d be demonstrably wrong) or attempt to claim that the cost of the stimulus was more than we received in benefit (I’d disagree, but it’s at least a feasible position) but again, in no universe is Obama responsible for the 9.5% unemployment.
Look at the graph of unemployment. Look at the rate of change. What is the rate of change under the last year of the Bush administration, and what is the rate of change under the current Obama administration? Note that I’m not blaming Bush here, just pointing out that it *can’t* be Obama’s fault, statistically.
In regards to shovel ready projects, what is happening is *exactly* what was expected, that stimulus money would be pushed out to projects over the spring and summer. There’s nothing new about that. There are no Democratic pay offs here.
Gahrie, this line of thought is a classic example of the fundamentally dishonest, easily disprovable falsehoods that are currently passing for mainstream thought on the Right. It’s immensely frustrating because, underneath all the bullshit, you MAY have a valid point. But not for the reasons you state. The notion that “Obama said unemployment would be 8%, instead it’s 9.5%, therefore STIMULUS FAIL!!!” is simply unsupportable.
The following is a fact: the reason the unemployment numbers are higher than projected is because more jobs were lost in the FIRST QUARTER — January, February and March — than economists expected when those projections were being created. Obviously, no one expected the stimulus to have an impact until the second quarter at the earliest, so you can’t blame the stimulus for the bad first-quarter numbers. Yet those bad first-quarter numbers put us on a trajectory where unemployment’s peak was inevitably going to be worse than we hoped back in January and February, when the stimulus was being debated.
Now, was the stimulus oversold to the American people? Has it not worked as well as advertised? Do its benefits pale in comparison to its costs? Maybe. You can make reasonable arguments on all of those points. You can claim that unemployment, although it inevitably peaked higher than expected, should have started falling by now, or at least that its rate of increase should have fallen more than it has. Those arguments are within the realm of rational, honest discourse. But you cannot reasonably use the mere fact that unemployment has reached 9.5%, contrary to the pre-stimulus estimates, as PROOF POSITIVE that the stimulus has FAILED.
Yet that’s exactly what you are doing, and it’s exactly what conservatives from sea to shining sea are doing. It’s a fundamentally dishonest argument that ignores basic, obvious, undeniable facts. That’s a shame, because it would be nice if we had some grownups making the case against Obama’s policies and promoting a sensible alternative. But we don’t. Instead we have a bunch of fibbing five-year-olds dominating discourse on the Right. It’s a sad state of affairs, and you’re part of it.
P.S. http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS14000000
P.P.S. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/bruce-bartlett-misstates-the-problem/
I realize you’re going to jump up and down saying it’s Paul Krugman and so it doesn’t matter, but these are not opinions he is stating — these are facts. I don’t necessarily agree with his advocacy of a “second stimulus” (that, of course, is an opinion), but there is no basis upon which I, or anyone else, can disagree with the core statistical fact that the stimulus wasn’t expect to do much by now, and the “bigger hole” that the stimulus must fill (as reflected on this chart) reflects NOT the “failure” of the stimulus, but rather the worsening of conditions during the first quarter of 2009, before the stimulus could possibly have had any effect.
Obama’s critics are entitled to their opinions. They’re not entitled to their own facts. If only they realized this.
But Brendan, you are just falling into the liberal fallacy of a fact based discourse. This is a major error when debating a Republican as the Bush administration’s media advisors pointed out, while you are busy dealing with a fact based world we are moving the playing field about and changing the facts. Or something like that, I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to look it up.
The unemployment rate as it stands now is not proof that the stimulus bill has failed, but it does prove that the Obama administration was wrong when it forecast that the unemployment rate would not exceed 8% if the bill was passed, and that they were obviously wrong to confidently stress that as one of the key selling points of the stimulus if they knew the data they were using had such a wide margin for error or if there was data that they weren’t factoring into their predictions that could significantly undercut those predictions when it became available.
Needless to say, the error doesn’t do much for the administration’s credibility when it comes to other jobs predictions, especially when Obama insists on making utterly specious claims about the number of jobs “saved” by the stimulus bill, which crazy right-wingers like the Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee admit are meaningless because they are unverifiable. Where ever the unemployment rate peaks, the administration can simply claim it would’ve been so many percentage points higher without the stimulus bill and there is no way to prove or disprove the claim, so it’s completely bogus.
I suspect that the well-everybody-thought-the-economy-was-thus-and-such excuse will go over about as well as Bush’s well-everybody-thought-Iraq-had-WMDs excuse, which is perfectly fine with me. Bush never “promised” that Iraq had WMDs either. As someone who repeatedly tried to explain to fibbing five-year-olds over the last 6 years the difference between being mistaken and lying, all I can say to the Obama supporters is . . . good luck and God bless.
And as someone who likewise defended Bush from charges that he “lied,” all I can say to Bush defenders / Obama critics is: you are a bunch of bloody hypocrites.
“Where ever the unemployment rate peaks, the administration can simply claim it would’ve been so many percentage points higher without the stimulus bill and there is no way to prove or disprove the claim, so it’s completely bogus.”
The fact that something is not susceptible for proof or disproof does NOT make it “completely bogus.” It is entirely possible that this unverifiable claim would be correct. Conversely, it might be incorrect. But it’s a counterfactual, and, like all counterfactuals, it cannot be proven one way or the other. That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.
I understand your frustration — dealing with unverifiable claims is never fun — but you’re overstating your case when you assert that such claims are “completely bogus.” What makes economics so frustrating, at least to me, is that it’s so complex, claims by either side can rarely be definitively “proven” or “disproven.” That’s why we’re still arguing over whether the New Deal was good or bad, for chrissakes. Clearly, it was either good or it was bad — SOMEONE is right — but neither side can definitively “prove” it.
all I can say to Bush defenders / Obama critics is: you are a bunch of bloody hypocrites.
Yep, but they certainly ain’t the only ones.
The fact that something is not susceptible for proof or disproof does NOT make it “completely bogus.” It is entirely possible that this unverifiable claim would be correct. Conversely, it might be incorrect. But it’s a counterfactual, and, like all counterfactuals, it cannot be proven one way or the other. That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.
Right, the assertion might not necessarily be incorrect, but it gets Obama exactly nowhere in terms of establishing the efficacy of his policy, which was my point. Feel free to substitute “hollow” or “worthless” in place of “bogus” to get my drift. Or let me put it another way that is more palatable: it’s no different than Bush claiming that his policies made America safer than the country would have been without them.