Unemployment Rising Faster In the U.S. Than Other Countries

Fox News ^ | October 22, 2009 | John R. Lott Jr.

[JohnRLott]

The Obama administration claims that it was their passage of massive government spending that saved the United States from another Great Depression. Last week, Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, claimed that because of the stimulus:

"We have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery. Most importantly, we have seen a substantial change in the trend of job loss."

And Vice President Biden declared at the end of September:

"In my wildest dreams, I never thought it [the stimulus] would work this well."

As President Obama and other Democrats have correctly pointed out many times, this has been a worldwide recession. But if Summers and Biden are right in their assessment of the stimulus measures, one would think that the U.S. economy should be recovering better the many other countries, countries not wise enough to follow Obama's lead of an extraordinary $787 billion increase in government spending. It is also particularly timely to evaluate the spending since Christina Romer, the chairwoman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, told Congress today that the stimulus had already had most of its impact on the economy.

Take Canada. Their stimulus package was nowhere as extensive as ours. Their $22.7 billion in stimulus spending this year, and $17.2 billion next year, amounts to about 7.5 percent of their federal spending for their 2009 and 2010 budgets -- not much more than a third of the per-capita stimulus spending in the United States.

Has Canadian unemployment climbed higher than than ours because of their relative inaction? Hardly. . . .

[princess leah]

Or maybe Obummer has “acted stupidly”

[TheThinker]

You're either being disingenuous or appallingly ignorant.

Well, I just wanted to see what he really thought. I assumed that China has made at least some progress since Tienanmen but maybe not.