YOU are wrong. I dont care if you like this particular piece of Govt spending, it will not stimulate the economy.
If general govt appropriations would stimulate the economy, we’d be flying high from the last 2 year of massive govt spending increases. It doesnt.
“earmarks like volcano monitoring have zero to do with stimulating the economy.” - is exactly correct.
You do realize that the military is a big beneficiary of this research, right?” So what. We dont spent on the DoD to ‘stimulate’ the economy either. We have over $600 billion in discretionary spending, if it is valuable enough put it there. Dont call it what its not.
ANY Govt spending like this to ‘stimulate’ the economy is doomed to fail at that. The money comes from priavate sector pockets and will cost as much in economic activity as it creates - there is no free lunch. We could have have had a trillion dollar tax cut and we would be ready for a big turnaround. INstead, Obama is sending us on a path that Japan took - and which we went through under the failed FDR New Deal policies.
Result? Years of net growth of about 0%.
I’m hopping mad to think it will take 10 years to get back the wealth lost in the 401k since Obama gave his acceptance speech.
It stimulates the economy. Question is, in what way?
It doesn’t generate capital.
It saves some jobs that were to be cut from spending cuts. It generates product demand, which creates the need for labor and other suppliers. It “borrows” that from the overall economy and the future.
Although the main reason for doing it should be that it’s worthy, that doesn’t mean it has no effect on stimulating part of the economy with corresponding dampening elsewhere.