The Obama stimulus was one of the greatest political disasters in American history. It’s not enough to say it did nothing; it did WORSE than nothing. And it is going to be like an anvil weighing down our economy for years and years to come as we struggle to pay back what will ultimately be $3.27 TRILLION.
Updated April 28, 2010
Why Our Unemployment Rate Is So Much Higher Than Others
By John Lott
FOXNews.comCompared to Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Brazil, Americans have real reasons to be dissatisfied with President Obama’s policies.
As President Obama travels today to Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, he will try to convince voters that his economic policies are creating jobs. But a year after Obama claimed that the stimulus had started creating jobs, it is not just the general public that believes that the stimulus was a waste of money, so do the experts. This week a new survey from the National Association for Business Economics found that 73 percent of business economists believe that the stimulus “has had no impact on employment.”
Many will point out that the unemployment rate has soared well above what the Obama administration predicted would occur if the stimulus were enacted. On Feb. 28, 2009, Eleven days after the stimulus bill signed into law, the White House predicted that the national unemployment rate would average 8.1 percent in 2009 and then decline to an average of 7.9 percent in 2010. Clearly things got much worse than the administration predicted. While the unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent in February, 2009, by the end of last year it had risen to 10 percent. It still remains very high at 9.7 percent.
As President Obama and other Democrats have correctly pointed out many times, this has been a worldwide recession. Why not compare the changes in unemployment rates in other countries to the unemployment rate in the U.S. Figure 1 shows (click here) the percentage change in the U.S.’s unemployment rate since January 2009 when Obama became president compared to Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Brazil. While several of the countries experienced similar increases during the beginning of 2009, by October of last year the United States had clearly “won” the race to have the largest percentage increase in unemployment of any of these countries.
Looking at the unemployment changes in terms of just the level of unemployment produces a similar picture (click here). The U.S. and many of these other countries had fairly similar unemployment rates in January last year, but by March the U.S.’s unemployment rate had increased.
Take Canada, whose economy is closely tied to ours and who is our largest trading partner. The Canadian stimulus package was nowhere as extensive as ours. Their stimulus spending of $22.7 billion last year and $17.2 billion, this year, amounts to about 7.5 percent of their federal spending for their 2009 and 2010 budgets — about a third of the per-capita stimulus spending in the United States.
Has Canadian unemployment climbed higher than ours because of their relative inaction? Hardly. Figure 3 shows (click here) the percentage change in unemployment rates in the U.S. and Canada since January 2009 when Barack Obama became president. While the percent increase in unemployment was the same for the first couple of months, Canada’s unemployment rate had peaked by August last year and fallen since then. By contrast, the U.S. rate only really began to decline the beginning of this year.
But it is not just Canada where the unemployment rate is faring better. Other countries, too, decided against a massive stimulus plan. In March, 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointedly refused to spend more money to “stimulate” the German economy. Yet, Figure 4 (click here) shows that Germany never really saw the unemployment experienced by other countries.
Japan clearly had an initial percentage increase in unemployment that was at least as bad as what we saw in the United States, though the country started from a much lower unemployment rate to begin with. Its stimulus as a percentage of GDP was also relatively large — about half as large as ours. Yet, Japan’s unemployment rate peaked in July 2009 and began to decline after that (see Figure 5 here).
The unemployment data shows that compared to these major countries, Americans have real reasons to be dissatisfied with Obama’s policies. It is also understandable why the vast majority of economists feel that Obama’s stimulus policies have spent a lot of money but produced no benefit. These same economists now expect the U.S. job market to improve, but that improvement won’t be due in any part thanks to Obama’s policies. It will just be due to the normal end of the recession.
As Obama travels the country today telling us what he is doing for us, Americans might do well to remember not just the huge bill that he has left our children and grandchildren, but how poorly he has done compared to other countries.
John R. Lott, Jr. is a FoxNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of “More Guns, Less Crime” (University of Chicago Press, 2010), the book’s third edition will be published in May.
According to a New York Times/CBS poll, a whopping 94% of the American people agree with Bayh. Only 6% of Americans believe Obama’s massive porkulus has created jobs a full year after going into effect.
Only SIX PERCENT of Americans believe that Obama’s porkulus has created any jobs at all. That means more Americans believe that space aliens have anally probed them than believe in the stimulus. It also means that 94% think Obama and his entire administration and the entire Democrat congressional leadership are completely full of crap.
And 48% of Americans polled don’t think porkulus will EVER create jobs.
And now we find out that the people were right.
We have to hold Democrats responsible for this travesty. We have to vote them out, before they destroy the country more than they already have.
Tags: $3.27 trillion, 8%, Brazil, Canada, economic policies, economists, Germany, Japan, largest percentage increase in unemployment, no impact on employment, Obama, stimulus, unemployment, unemployment rate, United Kingdom
Start Thinking Right 
July 10, 2011 at 11:53 am
This has to be satire or science fiction because it’s pure fantasy.
July 10, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Of course the author conveniently forget the 8 years of Bush managing the country to deeper debt until the whole system collapsed. Bush initiated the stimulus yet everyone seems to forget that. The Canadian situation is quite different then then the USA. We have a more conservative banking system and our mortgage are tightly regulated. Every Cabadian who owns a home trice to pay it off while too many US citizen pays only the interest hoping for the value to increase in time. The stimulus we had was used for major infrastructures project so the long term value is there. Stop spending so much on your war machine and you may find more money in your pocket. Oh and taxing the fat cat who do nothing for anyone would sure bring in more tax dollar to help rebuild the USA before it is too late. Voting Republican and the Tea party bunch in will be the race to the bottom without a doubt.
July 10, 2011 at 9:50 pm
There are dumbasses, and then there are people like you who are so intrinsically stupid that even “dumbass” isn’t adequate to describe you.
The fact that every single country that did a giant stimulus is struggling, and the fact that all the countries that REJECTED such stimulus programs are doing far better is just “satire” to you, is it?
Canada was mentioned as an example of a country that DIDN’T do a big stimulus. Guess what? With a population MORE THAN TEN TIMES SMALLER than ours, they somehow managed to create TWICE as many jobs as Obama this month.
Now get back in your chimp cage, Mr. Bull Crap Nobrains.
July 10, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Gary, will you please explain how you got so innoculated from reality?
George Bush gave us debt of $500 billion a year. BARACK OBAMA HAS GIVEN US DEBT OF $1.5 TRILLION A YEAR.
But somehow you put all the blame on the guy whose debt was one freaking third of the other guy, while having no problem with the guy whose debt was three times the guy you blame.
But you’re not done. You then proceed to claim the nonesense that “Bush initiated the stimulus yet everyone seems to forget that.” What rock do you live under? Bush had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the stimulus. Bush put together TARP, NOT the massive stimulus.
It’s no wonder someone like you believes that taxing the people who create jobs is the answer. Because seizing money from job creators and then pissing it away through government boondoggles only makes sense to someone who is as obviously foolish as you clearly are.
Apparently, Gary, you think Canada and Mother England were more than capable of winning World War II all by yourselves. Sometimes I think it’s just too damn bad we didn’t just let you speak German. That in addition to the fact that Bush got us into two wars, versus Obama who has gotten us into FIVE and didn’t even bother to consult Congress before doing it (unlike Bush).