Where's the stimulus in the stimulas package?

[Tman]

The NY times has a breakdown by category here (http://projects.nytimes.com/44th_president/stimulus)

Looking through this, there is roughly ~$50B set aside to actually create jobs, unless you categorize the $350B in social programs as generating jobs.

How exactly is this supposed to stimulate job creation when < 15% of the stimulus is actually for projects that create jobs?

This really seems more like a Democratic pet project list than a stimulus package.

(I looked at last 2 weeks of thread titles and if this is discussed elsewhere I didn't catch it which was rather suprising)

[zengonzo]

What are you defining as 'actually create jobs'?

Do incentives to industry/improved education/infrastructure improvements lack that potential?

[MikeJ]

A big category of the stimulus is aid to states. Since so many states have balanced-budget laws, in this economic climate they would have to cut a lot of jobs. The stimulus money means states don't have to cut so deeply, thus saving a lot of jobs, and propping up demand.

[Podunk]

What are you defining as 'actually create jobs'?

Do incentives to industry/improved education/infrastructure improvements lack that potential?

I work for a pump manufacturer and we are already bidding on stimulus-related infrastructure projects. That shit is already working.

[RSofaer]

The NY times has a breakdown by category here (http://projects.nytimes.com/44th_president/stimulus)

Looking through this, there is roughly ~$50B set aside to actually create jobs, unless you categorize the $350B in social programs as generating jobs.


Uh. The point is to stimulate aggregate demand, so yes, most people do categorize them that way.

You seem to have assumed that the only thing that creates jobs is job training and education.

[Tman]

let's just look at the top 10 of the breakdown?

Tax cuts to individuals - 116B
State Medicaid - 87B
Tax cuts to individuals - AMT - 69B
Education & Job Training to states -53B
Unemployment - 35B
Transportation - 27B
Health - Cobra - 25B
Aid - Food - 20B
Health - IT - 17B
Job Training - 15B

I bolded what I percieve as job creation. Doesn't it seem out of balance? So much aid, so little job creation. Why train workers if there are no new jobs?

Don't get me wrong, the ~50B is better than nothing, but it just seems to pale in comparison to the other aid.

And as far as the tax credits - always enjoy those, but while the fed giveth, the state taketh away. In Oregon, they've got their sights on a number of increases - gas, sin, hunting licenses, etc and even trying once again for the sales tax. All tax benefits to me from this administration will be sucked dry & then some by my home state.

[malchior]

A big category of the stimulus is aid to states. Since so many states have balanced-budget laws, in this economic climate they would have to cut a lot of jobs. The stimulus money means states don't have to cut so deeply, thus saving a lot of jobs, and propping up demand.
The cynical part of me would point out that state jobs are usually union jobs...but still fighting unemployment in some capacity is not a bad thing.

[zengonzo]

And as far as the tax credits - always enjoy those, but while the fed giveth, the state taketh away. In Oregon, they've got their sights on a number of increases - gas, sin, hunting licenses, etc and even trying once again for the sales tax. All tax benefits to me from this administration will be sucked dry & then some by my home state.

Sounds like you should be really pissed at your home state .. Though maybe it won't have to raise taxes so much if they get some federal aid to support their programs.

That aside, what would you see as more viable job creation other than investments in infrastructure?

What can the government pour money into that results in a direct influence on job creation? Isn't the idea to simply provide support and let demand create the jobs?

[Lorini]

The LAST thing the government should be doing is opening up Civil Servant job shops. That would be a long term disaster which would be difficult to recover from (see NASA).

[Bahimiron]

I work for a pump manufacturer and we are already bidding on stimulus-related infrastructure projects. That shit is already working.

I work for a threshold switching manufacturer that may very well provide pressure switches to your pump company! Hooray stimulus!

Business is down, but we're already seeing a boost to our sales from new rigs being set up by the oil industry thanks to the money that has been sent their way.

[Incendiary Lemon]

let's just look at the top 10 of the breakdown?

Tax cuts to individuals - 116B
State Medicaid - 87B
Tax cuts to individuals - AMT - 69B
Education & Job Training to states -53B
Unemployment - 35B
Transportation - 27B
Health - Cobra - 25B
Aid - Food - 20B
Health - IT - 17B
Job Training - 15B

I bolded what I percieve as job creation.

All of the above should increase aggregate demand although some are more effective than others. Measures such as unemployment will not create jobs as you note but they will soften the pain of the recession by propping up demand and reducing the pro-cyclical propensity of balanced budget laws in the states.

Food aid is a great way to spend stimulus money. It will go to the poorest Americans who have the highest propensity to consume.

[Lux]

let's just look at the top 10 of the breakdown?

Tax cuts to individuals - 116B
State Medicaid - 87B
Tax cuts to individuals - AMT - 69B
Education & Job Training to states -53B
Unemployment - 35B
Transportation - 27B
Health - Cobra - 25B
Aid - Food - 20B
Health - IT - 17B
Job Training - 15B

I bolded what I percieve as job creation. Doesn't it seem out of balance? So much aid, so little job creation. Why train workers if there are no new jobs?

Don't get me wrong, the ~50B is better than nothing, but it just seems to pale in comparison to the other aid.

And as far as the tax credits - always enjoy those, but while the fed giveth, the state taketh away. In Oregon, they've got their sights on a number of increases - gas, sin, hunting licenses, etc and even trying once again for the sales tax. All tax benefits to me from this administration will be sucked dry & then some by my home state.

Actually the only things you mention that don't generate at least 1 tier of jobs (and many of them have a ripple effect as well) are the tax cuts, which put more money in the hands of individuals. One could argue that unemployment has that effect as well. Bear in mind that basic service industries in some hard hit communities would fold entirely without the short term benefits of unemployment, and the population of those communites would have to be a burden upon the nearest major population center. Of course everyone is already leaving the big cities because the high cost of living is no longer balanced by lucrative work oppurtunities (I'm actually part of this migration).

Another somewhat indirect facet of the stimulus is all of the healthcare related aid. Our healthcare system is no longer an affordable prospect for the uninsured and insurace isn't really affordable beyond the first six months or so for the unemployed. In light of that mass unemployment threatens the massively lucrative healthcare industry that produces untold amouts of higher end jobs. If significantly fewer people can afford to use that industry (and the parasitic insurance industry attached to it) then a lot of those jobs go away. As collateral damage you also have public health problems spiraling out of control due to lack of care.

[Tman]

That aside, what would you see as more viable job creation other than investments in infrastructure?

What can the government pour money into that results in a direct influence on job creation? Isn't the idea to simply provide support and let demand create the jobs?

How about $200B-$500B in infrastructure instead of a meager $50B? It's not that I don't disagree with infrastructure - I just think the investment pales in comparison to the $758B "stimulus package"

Bridges & hiways are good, what about rail? It's about time we invest in hi-speed rail. That'd cost a lot and put a lot of people to work in many states.

[zengonzo]

I agree with that, certainly. Even if we can't criss-cross the entire country, at least regional railways should be beefed up.

[Cubit]

I agree as well. In my area, AmTrak is a fucking joke.

[Lux]

How about $200B-$500B in infrastructure instead of a meager $50B? It's not that I don't disagree with infrastructure - I just think the investment pales in comparison to the $758B "stimulus package"

Bridges & hiways are good, what about rail? It's about time we invest in hi-speed rail. That'd cost a lot and put a lot of people to work in many states.

Never gonna happen with the air travel lobby as beefy as it is.

[Ben Sones]

They are talking about doing high-speed rail here, across upstate NY and going down to New York City. Some people are against it, I think those people are nuts. Three hour train rides from Rochester to NYC? Yes, please!

[Lux]

They are talking about doing high-speed rail here, across upstate NY and going down to New York City. Some people are against it, I think those people are nuts. Three hour train rides from Rochester to NYC? Yes, please!

You can bet the Eastman faculty are drooling at the prospect since a fair number of them had to truncate their NYC performing careers to take their professorships.

[Anaxagoras]

Bridges & hiways are good, what about rail? It's about time we invest in hi-speed rail. That'd cost a lot and put a lot of people to work in many states.

I thought rail of any sort is only cost effective in high population density areas. I would think that laying rail across (say) Montana would be a monumental waste of money.

Am I wrong? Please to be edumacating me.

[Lux]

I thought rail of any sort is only cost effective in high population density areas. I would think that laying rail across (say) Montana would be a monumental waste of money.

Am I wrong? Please to be edumacating me.

It's pretty hard to make rail profitable in an environment where everyone by neccissity has a perfectly good car and is willing to drive it anywhere shouldering the costs. It's particularly hard to justify in the US because of the massive investment we already have in road infrastructure. Ultimately if everyone wasn't shouldering the cost of private vehicles AND the taxes for the corresponding roads rail would be crazy cheaper however that's not the country we live in.

Long distance rail competes with aviation and needs serious traffic to be financially viable. Montana and my home state of Alaska are an excellent examples of areas where aviation and private autos are the best solution. The eastern seaboard, on the other hand, could support a tremendously profitable high speed rail system if it wasn't already being serviced by top notch roads and airports.

Any move the US makes towards short or long range rails won't be a quick or big moneymaker (or work at all!) due to the mature transportation methods already enshrined in our culture/economy/country/grid. Our roads and airports are just too well developed to discard in favor of another system unless there's a compelling economic incentive or ideological will.

[Tman]

You're all thinking the wrong avenue for coast-to-coast.

Freight. We have tons of truckers plowing the roads because freight is so slow. You still need trucks, but they would be short-haul from distribution yards in the cities.

There was an allegory a while back, something along the lines of the space shuttle was based on the width of a horses ass b/c a supplier (Morton Thiokel?) had to use rails to get parts to FL, and the components are limited to the size of the tunnels the rail has to go through (and rails were supposedly engineered to be compatible with carts pulled by horses or some such. Anyway, imagine rails 10-12 feet wide, and capable of 300mph trains.

Passengers would benefit as well. Imagine if you could live 120 miles from where you work, but be there in 30 minutes? Better yet, take your car with you. Like the ferry's in coastal areas - drive your car on, hop off read the paper & have a cup of joe and drive off when you reach your destination.

Anyway, the point is, this would create a huge amount of jobs - and it would have economic benefit as well as environmental as we could eliminate a lot of trucks on the interstates.

[WildElf]

It's pretty hard to make rail profitable in an environment where everyone by neccissity has a perfectly good car and is willing to drive it anywhere shouldering the costs. <snip>

I dunno, at least for short distance rail. I don't hear about many New Yorkers preferring to drive, and many San Franciscans I know only have a car if they commute out of the city. LA had a great rail system until the auto companies lobbied for freeways instead. The biggest complaint I hear (and have) in the Bay Area is lack of access to rail. I have to drive 30 minutes to the nearest BART station, and then it's questionable whether I can find parking, or I can take light rail and transfer twice, making a rail commute that way around three hours.

Certainly, the car culture is a hurdle, but mainly because we've ignored the alternatives for so long that we've added so many roads and freeways, not to mention commuter cities and suburbs and builting out instead of up. Because it was cheaper to build out and accessible thanks to cars, people spread out and live further and further from any other transportation networks.

But feeding into it only makes the sprawl and traffic and all of it worse. We've got to stop somewhere. Better sooner than later. And in the past few years there's been a population movement back into more centralized areas, so lets capture the zeitgeist.

And for long distance, well aviation is in serious trouble already. So it very well could be that high speed intercity trains is a way to bail them out, so to speak, so airlines can focus on longer distance travel or getting over low population areas where a long rail line doesn't make sense (like say Montana, or connecting the west coast with the midwest in general). Or maybe cars will make the most sense for inter-city travel for most places. That's fine too. Rail might not be a cure all, but from my experience of it here and travelling to the east coast, it's a hell of a lot better than driving when you can get to it. And I love driving.

[Lux]

I'm right there with you on the desirability of rails (I'd love to have European style mass transit) WildElf, but I was speaking more to the profitability of it in the short term. Obviously it CAN work well and be profitable but the initial infrastructure investment to do it in the US would be pretty astronomical and it would have to compete with cars and planes.

You're right, a lot of New Yorkers actually don't have cars because of the superb subway system and BART is fantastic, particularly as west coast cities go. The catch is that those are two of the best examples of mass transit in the country. For the car culture to dial back available rail transit has to be near ubiquitous rather than in isolated patches. Until the car culture dies back, we're going to end up continuing to support and expand our massive road system making any investment in rails additional cost in an already strained transportation budget.

I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't be focusing on mass transit, but rather that it won't be easy or cheap which is generally a prerequisite for challenging juggernauts like automotive or air transportation. In my opinion some part of the exsisting transportation equation has to change abruptly for the worse before we get too hevily into rails. Traffic is incremental so people get used to it. Gas prices generally are incremental as well, though if the upward trend of last year had continued I was hoping it might be the clincher.

I guess when it comes down to it a switch to rails is probably going to have to be more of a social engineering step where we HOPE that people start using them instead of cars and planes rather than a just plain engineering step where we can set up a new service that everyone will agree is worth the money.

[Aeon221]

Infrastructure investment takes years just to get beyond the planning stages. Unemployment checks take effect now. Since the recession is happening now, not in a couple of years, it's a good idea for the majority of it to be easily deployed stuff like food aid, unemployment, and money to prevent states from raising taxes.

[Tman]

Obama wants high speed rail to start now (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30245658/)

Yes!

[Joe M.]

I really could give a shit about the "profitability" of high speed rail -- this sort of thinking pisses me off. This is the government we're talking about. How many programs does it support that aren't "profitable"? Sometimes the benefits to the community outweigh whatever cost we end up shouldering.

[John Many Jars]

If you don't have high-speed rail, you can't have high-speed head-on train collisions, is what I'm saying.

[Anti-Bunny]

Obama wants high speed rail to start now (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30245658/)

Yes!

Union Pacific and Central Pacific shall rise again!

[wildpokerman]

So is the spelling of the same word two different ways in the title of this thread intentional?

Is the second spelling supposed to be Stimulass like the posters at the tea parties? E and A are kind of close so I suppose it could be an accident but then I see that the OP says he's from ORYGAN and I wonder what's up with that title again.

[croman]

Damn commie bastards nationalizing our rails. Just like Jindal said, they'll spend money running a train to Las Vegas and sociali.... What!?! (http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/75217/original.jpg) Where's the commie train to Vegas in all of this??

Seriously, if this high-speed rail can replace a part of our airline industry for short trips, we'll be 10x better off. ( And us Las Vegans will be fine without stimulus money... The damn train from Anaheim to Vegas was being planned and funded way before this. )