Chart of the Day: The Stimulus

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In the New York Times today, David Leonhardt writes what should be obvious: last year’s stimulus bill, though not perfect, has been a smashing success:

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

….Around the world over the last century, the typical financial crisis caused the jobless rate to rise for almost five years, according to work by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. On that timeline, our rate would still be rising in early 2012. Even that may be optimistic, given that the recent crisis was so bad. As Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson (Republicans both) and many others warned in 2008, this recession had the potential to become a depression.

For partisan political reasons, Republicans find it in their interest to insist that the stimulus was just a boondoggle that hasn’t created a single job. The fact that this frequently gets reported with a straight face is a black mark for the press, which ought to insist on its sources being a wee bit more reality-based if they want to be quoted without being immediately debunked in the following paragraph.

The chart below from Organizing For America tells the real story. We still have a long way to go before job growth is back to normal, but the stimulus is getting us there a lot faster than we would have gotten there otherwise.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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