Monday, February 02, 2009

"Stimulus": Majority Thinks It Won't Work

Last week, we mentioned a Harris poll on it; this week, Opinion Dynamics.

* Less than half of voters, 45 percent, think “Barack Obama’s proposed $825 billion dollar economic recovery plan” will help the economy. And that’s when you tell them it’s an “economic recovery plan.”

* 61 percent of voters think elected officials in Washington are causing our economic problems. Only 27 percent say they are part of the solution.

* More think the economic stimulus plan should focus on “cutting taxes” to create jobs, 50 percent, than “increasing government spending on new programs and infrastructure projects.” only 29 percent.

(The Harris poll is also on that link-page.)

Maybe it's the "STD prevention", ACORN-gifts, and "building MPS buildings" for $86 million.

Or a $2++ MILLION dollar bicycle bridge.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe it's because they've been hearing for thirty years that tax cuts are the solution to every problem. And maybe they don't know that government spending raises economic output 1.30 for every dollar you put in it, and that tax cuts raise economic output less than a dollar for every dollar you put in it.

Dad29 said...

You have a cite for that "Less than a dollar" of course.

Shoebox said...

Scott, Obama's own economist, Christina Romer says that tax cuts are far more stimulative than govt. spending. http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~cromer/RomerDraft307.pdf
"In short, tax increases appear to have a
very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output. Since most of our exogenous tax
changes are in fact reductions, the more intuitive way to express this result is that tax cuts have very large
and persistent positive output effects."

Billiam said...

Never try to convince a Democrat that tax cuts actually increase the amount of money the Feds take in. CBO numbers don't mean anything to them if it doesn't fit the template. How many people seem ignorant of the fact that if you SPEND more than you TAKE IN, you'll wind up on the negative side of the ledger. This is true whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. Good intentions and feelings don't change the numbers. Under the Bush tax cuts, revenue increased. Of course, then Republicans started acting like Democrats, and spent more than they took in. Combined with war spending, instant deficit.