The Stimulus Worked. We Need More.

This morning’s headline over at Huffpo: “It Worked, Every Major Economic Research Firm Says Stimulus Added at Least 1.6 Million Jobs.” Right now It links to a N.Y. Times story that say 2.5 million jobs were added.

No Kidding. Of course it worked. When 800 billion dollars are spent on a wide range of projects it is going to create work. It does not matter who spends it.

When faced with the real numbers repub/cons will claim that those 2.5 million jobs are not “real jobs”. The will spout dogma that goes like this: “Government jobs are not real jobs because once the government money runs out the jobs are gone.” Put an other way impermanent jobs are not real jobs. According to this “logic”any job is not a real job, not just government jobs. But it would be especially true of nonstandard jobs. Construction workers don’t really have jobs because once the construction project is done their job is gone. In fact according to The Iowa Policy Project, a nonpartisan think tank, 26 percent of the U.S. workforce had jobs in 2005 that were in one way or another “nonstandard.” and impermanent. That includes independent contractors, temps, part-timers, and freelancers. (pdf here)  According to Republican math, that totals about 36 million jobs that are not “real”  jobs.

The sister repub/con dogmatic denial of reality slogan is “Government has never created one job”. This is favorite slogan of Republican politicians, Senators, Governors, and House reps, who receive a government pay check. (Just once I would like to see one of the media’s talking heads ask a repub pol  if his job is a real job.) The government employs over 4 million teachers in “fake” jobs. The post office employs 650,000 people in “imaginary” government jobs. On top of those the Feds employ 2 million more people and  State and local governments cut pay checks for 8.3 million more. In all the government directly provides at least 15 million jobs, that according to Republicans can not exist.  Add this 15 million to the other 36 million jobs that Republicans say can not exist and we get 51 million impossible jobs!

So now you understand the some of the “thinking”  behind why repub/cons do not believe government spending creates jobs. And why despite what the numbers tell us, and despite what any reputable economist says, the government can not create real jobs. And 2+2=5.

Now if we could just get the “liberal” Media to stop repeating that 2+2= 5 we just might start getting more of the jobs spending we need.

Because even though the stimulus spending worked it was not enough, Unemployment is still at 10%, and it is running out.

[Via http://outerpartypress.wordpress.com]