What Impact Did President Obama’s Stimulus Really Have?
Aleksey Gladyshev /
It has been a little over one year since the stimulus package was passed through Congress in order to spur private consumption and to decrease high unemployment, and a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal by Harvard economist Robert Barro discusses the impact the stimulus has had on the economy.
The article argues that the government’s method of mass spending to improve economic conditions is an inefficient way to spend taxpayer money, and that the questions about whether the stimulus moderated the recession are complex – more complex than government organizations and committees might want people to think.
In his article, Barro states that:
[Answers about the impact of the stimulus on the recession] require more than merely counting the quantity of goods and services that the government purchased or the number of people that the government hired. We need to ask whether the government’s spending reduced or enhanced private spending and whether public-sector hiring lowered or raised private hiring… [M]y own analysis makes me skeptical about the numbers they’ve reported about GDP increases and saved jobs.