<p>Wow, just wow, 62,000 job cuts announced today. Will the stimulus plan work?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/business/economy/27jobcuts.html?_r=1&hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/business/economy/27jobcuts.html?_r=1&hp</a></p>
<p>What was it Joseph Stalin said? “One lost job is a tragedy. A million lost jobs is a statistic.” Something like that.</p>
<p>It looks like the Street has found its new game: who lays off more workers. It is becoming a fad; if you are not firing people you are doing something wrong.</p>
<p>Somehow I see Wall Street saying one of my favorite lines from Animal House:</p>
<p>“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f^&8^^ up - you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.”</p>
<p>Sprint is laying off thousands of people in my hometown. Ouch! That will affect so many people here. I’m really worried.</p>
<p>Oh no, we’re all gonna die!</p>
<p>Woman Found Dead in Home in Eastern Iowa
Teenager, Her Mother Fatally Shot in Largo
2 dead in weekend’s subzero cold in NE Wis.
Fatal Concord crash highlights residents’ ire over parked rigs
City police find man dead in cab
Woman found dead outside house in Seabeck
One dead, one critical in Richmond apartment fire
Man, 2 kids found dead in LIE car fire
Thousands of dead birds found </p>
<p>If you read the obits, losing your job doesn’t seem quite as tragic.</p>
<p>What stimulus? The GOP is against it. 2009 is predicted to be another bad year.</p>
<p>IMO.
Until there is/are alternatives, we have but two choices. Either we do or we don’t. Whether a tax cut happens will mean little other than help those who still have jobs or who have business that is making money.</p>
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<p>The GOP is against this stimulus. The GOP is for a stimulus made up more of tax cuts than raising the size of government beyond even where Bush took it.</p>
<p>Stimulus Plan???
There is no plan, just list of wishes that everybody had from their home towns / states to buy votes in couple years, including bunch of checks that used to be called wellfare, contraceptives “to reduce costs” by wise Nancy (she meant that less people will be born?). Why this gigantic experiment will be successful, if there is no single instance in a world that this type of spending has ever worked in a past in any country in a world? To top it all, the person who will be overlooking it all is the same one who was soo successful with the first bail out, and he had to be forced to pay his own taxes only after being nominated to Treasury, which he gleefully admitted himself. This plainly is the same as calling the rest of country population fools.</p>
<p>the stimulus is terrible failure.</p>
<p>The economy will self correct as a market economy does. It might be a little rough for a little while, but the economy movies in cycles. It doesn’t always go up.</p>
<p>[Nightly</a> Business Report . “Market Monitor”-John Hughes, President of Quantum Capital Management | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/090123c/]Nightly”>http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/090123c/)</p>
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<p>“The economy will self correct as a market economy does.”</p>
<p>If it is let to be corrected. It does not look like government is going to leave some $$ out there for private investors. Government is working very hard to switch economy from “market economy” to “government economy”. “Stimulus” will make sure that if it ever “self correct”, it will take much much longer, if ever.</p>
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<p>There are lessons to be learned from the Great Depression.</p>
<p>In the '30s, total government spending as a share of the economy averaged just below 20%, while unemployment averaged 17%.</p>
<p>Total government spending spiked to 52% in 1942. By 1944, it had risen to almost 70%, with unemployment falling to 1%.</p>
<p>Today, total government spending is around 35%. Perhaps this somewhat higher number than in the 30s has protected our economy from an even steeper plunge. And, like in the 40s, perhaps it will take increased government spending to lift us out of deep recession.</p>
<p>“Total government spending spiked to 52% in 1942. By 1944, it had risen to almost 70%, with unemployment falling to 1%.”</p>
<p>WWII. You refer that we need to get into WWIII situation to get ourselves better? I will take government non-engagement first. Well, if you use the logic that taking umbrella with you prevents rain… well maybe it is true for somebody with umbrella, how about the rest of us?</p>
<p>There are lessons to be learned from the Great Depression.</p>
<p>
Obviously the government can reduce shocks. The question is what will increase the standard of living in the long term. Clearly, too much government is not an advantage (ie: communism).</p>
<p>[FDR’s</a> policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate / UCLA Newsroom](<a href=“http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx]FDR’s”>http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx)</p>
<p>There is no guarantee, stimulus will get you out of depression either</p>
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<p>Other economists believe FDR didn’t do enough early in the Depression to stem economic decline and engineer a recovery. Despite FDR’s reputation as an advocate of Keynesian economics, total government spending as a share of the economy remained at around 20% during the '30s. The economy didn’t recover until the '40s when a huge surge in government spending led to increased industrial production and a decline in unemployment.</p>
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<p>It worked in the '40s, and in the ensuing years the US went on to attain a very high standard of living (and we’ve yet to fall to communism!)</p>
<p>Although these job cuts make headlines and people like to blame the overall economy and consider stimulus plans as a means of preventing the layoffs, or use the layoffs as a means of justifying the plan, many/most of these companies were in trouble well before the economic downturn - </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Sprint has been headed down for a number of years now. They have too much competition from AT&T and Verizon. One wonders how many viable cell phone companies there can be given the huge infrastructure costs required to run one.</p></li>
<li><p>Home Depot ventured into the ‘Expo’ stores but I think they’ve been a money loser for a long time.</p></li>
<li><p>GM - well, there’s nothing new about GM having more layoffs and their problems stemmed from well before the economic downturn.</p></li>
<li><p>Pfizer/Wyeth - it’s normal to have layoffs when two companies merge - it’s one of the reasons they do it - so they can be more efficient by getting rid of redundancy.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The government should keep their fingers out of the operations of the above companies. Sometimes natural selection needs to take its course.</p>
<p>I agree with your natural selection point ucsd. The auto industry is the poster child for this. As we more firmly move into a global economy, there will be industries and companies that no longer have reason for being in the Country. IMO, the only money that should go to Detroit is for retraining the employees for a viable American industry.</p>