Oh, well. Maybe we’ll still get the monorail.
Here is a graph showing the true effect of the stimulus package on unemployment. And the answer is: the predictions were wrong and the stimulus seems to have had no effect whatsoever.
The Terminator said in a podcast last Spring that unemployment was going to be the Achilles Heel of the Obama regime and he pegged 10% as the symbolic bench mark. We hit that in October. And keep in mind this figure does not include a peculiar characteristic of this recession: the people who have just dropped out of the economy and who aren’t looking for work. So – as usual – the government figures under-report the actual situation.
Nor does this chart factor in the anti-employment effects of cap and trade, higher income tax brackets or, God forbid, the health care scheme, all of which disproportionally affect small businesses.
This chart was obviously jimmied to make it seem as if unemployment would get back under 7% for the Congressional elections in 2010 and under 6% in time for the 2012 Presidential campaign. That doesn’t look like it is going to happen.
Terminator was right, you know
I was implying that you were.
Add to the equation the attempts by the government to defer further trouble by extending unemployment benefits. They don’t want those people dumped back into the category of “actively seeking employment” (which would raise the unemployment figures) and it also sets the stage for a new class of welfare.
Bread and circuses…