Stimulus and Jobs (posted by DT)

Really good report on job gains in the economy yesterday:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/07/private-sector-jobs/

A few points about job growth and the Democratic Stimulus package from last year

• Conservatives blasted the stimulus at the time, saying that it would destroy the economy and would only lead to government jobs. Clearly there has been growth in private sector jobs; according to the report over 500,000 new private sector jobs have been created this year. I guess maybe Keynes was right, though that's not a surprise to most economists- just to the nut-jobs employed by the right-wing echo-chamber.
• In my correspondence a while back with a conservative friend, he asked me "what would it take to prove to you that deficit spending and economic stimulus does not work?" It was a fair question, since we both agreed that the economy was going to come back one way or another from the bottom, making it tough to prove the effectiveness of stimulus spending. My response at the time was that in Europe there was relatively less stimulus spending, so if Europe recovered more effectively than the US that would be a (bad) data point for me. Well, it seems that Europe isn't doing too well. Now obviously there are lots of factors in this, but it's pretty clear that US stimulus spending has helped the recovery.

Unfortunately, the economy isn't recovering as quickly as the Democrats need it to, and it looks like the Democrats are going to lose tons of seats in November. I'm still struggling with what this means. The economy still stinks overall and the incumbent party is always punished when that happens. Also, Democrats won pretty much everything in 2008, and now hold lots of traditional Republican seats, so with the disaster of Republican rule fading in peoples' memories one would expect to lose some seats. Still, it looks like lots of seats are at risk, and one wonders if more aggressive stimulus measures in 2008 might have yielded a faster recovery and saved the House for the Democrats. While part of me wants to whine about the unfairness of holding the Democrats accountable for an economy wrecked by their opponents, another part of me feels that Democrats would be doing better if they had better party discipline and displayed the courage of their convictions.