The Stimulus Evidence One Year On
The Stimulus Evidence One Year On
Over five years, my research shows an extra $600 billion of public spending at the cost of $900 billion in private expenditure. That's a bad deal.
By ROBERT J. BARRO
The first anniversary of the Obama stimulus package generated a lot of discussion about whether and how much the package (originally estimated at $787 billion but now priced at $862 billion) moderated the recession. These are complex questions, and their answers require more than merely counting the quantity of goods and services that the government purchased or the number of people that the gov…