<p>Most of the government stimulus was designed to save or create jobs in 4 primary areas:</p>
<p>(1) infrastructure–which means building roads or buildings, or helping out tech or manufacturing industries which build computers or hard goods. This has many been helpful to construction companies and some tech companies, who lost about 70% to 85% of their business during this downturn–but it mainly saved only existing jobs–and hasn’t created any new jobs to speak of;</p>
<p>(2) “green” jobs–such as jobs in alternative energy (solar, wind, etc.). The problem with this type of “stimulus” was that it was all tax-savings based–and nobody was buying alternative energy just to save on their taxes (hard to worry about this when you didn’t even know if you were going to have a job in a month or two);</p>
<p>(3) schools and state governments–this was more of a “bailout” than a stimulus program and was designed mostly to prevent layoffs due to states or school districts going bankrupt. It has been successful (I work as a budget person for a school district and so can vouch for this). However, the “stimulus” is (a) only saving jobs, not creating new ones; and (b) designed to be used over an 18-month period between July 2009 and December 2010–and so is only about 50% spent at this time–and there is a lag in having this “trickle-down” into the regular economy; and</p>
<p>(4) the stimulus was designed to rescue the banks and insurance companies (well, at least the ones not already bailed out by the Federal Reserve). Yes, this did save the banks–but then the banks were supposed to (in-turn) start lending again to stimulate the economy. However, the banks were under no requirement to do so–and thus, only did so to the most credit-worthy customers–meaning that the stimulus was much less than planned.</p>
<p>Was the stimulus package successful? Only partially, in that it did prevent a complete meltdown of the economic system. However, it has not had the intended effect on increasing jobs for middle America–and thus, this is the reason that Obama proposed a different approach in his “State of the Union” address. As usual, government responds slowly to a crisis–if it responds at all–and takes its time in helping anyone but the “Fat Cats” on Wall Street or in Washington, D.C. </p>
<p>Also, let me be clear here–the problem extends from both political parties. In fact, in my view, the Republican answer–which was to do nothing–would have been even more of a disaster. It is sad state of affairs, however, that only the people that created the problem (those on Wall Street with their derivatives con game) are the ones who seem to have been able to recover from the economic depression/recession problem at the current moment.</p>
<p>It is also sad to see how the young people coming out of college are suffering as a result of the depression and the resulting inability to get a decent job upon graduation.</p>