转一篇新鲜出炉的。没什么可说的，此次危机之后，可能的积极成果是让凯恩斯经济学
派的荼毒寿终正寝！
引子：“a federal contractor said he was told to use smaller, nonstandard
tiles that are harder and more expensive to install in order to increase the
cost of the project. That way, the government could claim the money was
moving out the door faster. The famous Milton Friedman line about government
ordering people to dig with spoons to employ more people comes to mind.”
Why the Stimulus Failed
New research on what actually happened to a trillion dollars.
Even zero jobs growth in August doesn't seem to have disrupted President
Obama's faith in the economic policies of his first three years, so one
theme we'll be listening for in tonight's speech is how he explains the
current moment. Why did his first jobs plan—the $825 billion stimulus—so
quickly result in the need for another jobs plan?
For readers who want to know, an important account is offered in a pair of
new Mercatus Center working papers by the George Mason economists Garett
Jones and Daniel Rothschild, who did field research on what they call the
supply side of the stimulus.
The Keynesian theory was that a burst of new government spending would take
up some of the slack in aggregate consumer demand. This was justified in
2008, again in 2009, and is still defended now based not on real-world
observation but on abstract macroeconomic models that depend on the
assumptions of the authors. The Congressional Budget Office's quarterly
studies—often cited to claim the stimulus created tens of thousands of new
jobs—are based on such a model. By informative contrast, Messrs. Jones and
Rothschild interviewed actual people who received stimulus dollars and asked
how they spent the money.
In the first paper, the authors survey 85 different businesses, nonprofits
and local governments across the country and conclude that "As is often the
case when economic models are transferred from the blackboard to actual
public policy, there was a gap between theory and practice."
One of the major patterns Messrs. Jones and Rothschild uncovered was that
the top-down stimulus was poorly targeted. In one redolent example, a
federal contractor said he was told to use smaller, nonstandard tiles that
are harder and more expensive to install in order to increase the cost of
the project. That way, the government could claim the money was moving out
the door faster. The famous Milton Friedman line about government ordering
people to dig with spoons to employ more people comes to mind.
In another case study, a budget shortfall forced a mid-size city to lay off
185 public workers—but the city received a $4 million stimulus grant to
improve municipal energy efficiency. The manager of a construction company
received funds for "the last thing on our list; and truthfully, the least
useful thing." It happened to be a crane and a forklift.
The authors are careful to note that such anecdotes do not mean that all of
the stimulus was a waste, and they did find some success stories. The
problem is that all but the most reductionist Keynesians of the Paul Krugman
school believe it matters what the government spends money on. A dollar
that eventually will be taken out of the private economy through borrowing
or higher taxes to fund pointlessly expensive projects—a la the tiny tiles
—is not the way to nurture a recovery.
The second paper suggests that the stimulus did not "create or save" nearly
as many jobs as the models indicate. On the basis of 1,300 interviews,
Messrs. Jones and Rothschild estimate that merely 42.1% of the firms that
received grants hired people who were unemployed. Instead, they poached
workers from their competitors.
"This suggests just how hard it is for Keynesian job creation to work in a
modern, expertise-based economy," they write. The stimulus "was implemented
at a time when the Keynesian model had every chance of succeeding on its own
terms. The high level of unemployment and the rapid deadline for spending
created both the supply of workers and the demand for workers. If the job
market results are so lackluster in this setting, economists should expect
even weaker stimulative results during more modest recessions."
The lesson of such on-the-ground knowledge is that the stimulus was a lost
opportunity. In practice it became a shotgun marriage between an economic
theory justified by computer models and 40 years of liberal social
priorities (clean energy, Medicaid expansions and the rest). This produced
the 9.1% unemployment we now have.
The economy would have benefitted far more if the government had instead
improved the incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and
grow. The President probably won't mention any of this, but it does explain
why he has to give his latest speech.
