Arnold Kling contemplated a NY Times question: “Did the stimulus work?”
His Hamlet-worthy answer: “I don’t know.”
He then goes on to write:
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It would appear that the great claim to fame of the stimulus is that it kept state and local governments from having to reduce spending. If you combine that with wage stickiness at the state and local level (that is, if you believe that they would cut jobs rather than cut pay for government workers), then the stimulus saved jobs. From a Recalculation perspective, one might ask whether those are the jobs that you would want to save.
One might answer, “No.”
One might also point to efforts by public employee unions (e.g., SEIU in California) to use courts to nullify reduced hours (such as through furloughs).
[SFX: meaty thump, as cliff diver hitting rocks after the tide has run out.]
Tags: ARRA, economic stimulus, federal stimulus, Hamlet, The New York Times, unemployment
