In your opinion, how effective has the stimulus been so far?

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

It has been very effective at wasting lots of money and expanding government.

It has been very ineffective at staving off unemployment, creating jobs, and reviving the economy.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

The problem was that there were a lot of tax cuts, and not what gets the most bang for the buck.

Well for one thing, that buck you speak of is now worth a whole lot less thanks to Obama's reckless spending.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Low end of moderately effective. I think you'd be surprised at the impact it truly did have. Not all of it was about jobs, as you're sort of mischaracterizing, alot of it had to do with strengthening the safety net as well. Food stamp money, unemployment benefits, medicaid spending, state financial aid, etc.

In other words, it was just money down the drain. Rather than fix the problems so these people could find jobs and succeed, the Obama regime just threw money at them to keep 'em quiet.

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Too small? Considering this stimulus had net negative effects, making the stimulus bigger would just make those effects more negative.

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Except for the fact that government make-work does nothing to improve the economy, but rather destroys wealth, and weakens the ability of the economy to expand.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Well, I don't think that's always true. I think our transportation systems for example do represent a tremendous obstacle to long term growth - they're aging, in disrepair, and increasingly prohibitively expensive to do basic upkeep with. A program to overhaul the high way system could yield higher growth. Unfortunately, the government is clearly not thinking anywhere near that long term - instead they're just building more rather than building smarter.

Well that's because of government's monopoly on the transportation system. The solution is to let the market take over, not to use that as an excuse for make-work to cover up embarrassing unemployment numbers.

The state does not know how to allocate resources effectively. Remember, every tax dollar spent on temporary construction jobs is a dollar stolen out of the pocket who might have otherwise been planning to hire another worker or start/expand a business, which would have provided long-term jobs and long-term economic growth. Instead, facing higher taxes and inflation, a business owner might be forced to fire employees or shut down entirely.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

We, too, have done a good job of that. I guess it was too hard to just use the stimulus to create jobs in this country. Another epic fail from the "free traders".

Use the stimulus to create jobs? That would be like trying to use a loaded gun to heal a cancer patient, i.e., it makes no sense whatsoever.