by Thomas Sowell
Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if
you called the tail a leg? When the audience said "five," Lincoln
corrected them, saying that the answer was four. "The fact that you
call a tail a leg does not make it a leg."
That same principle applies today. The fact that politicians
call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. The fact that
they call something a "jobs bill" does not mean there will be more
jobs.
What have been the actual consequences of all the hundreds of
billions of dollars that the government has spent? The idea behind the
spending is that it will cause investors to invest, lenders to lend and
employers to employ.
That was called "pump priming." To get a pump going, people put a
little water into it, so that the pump will start pumping out a lot of
water. In other words, government money alone was never supposed to
restore the economy by itself. It was supposed to get the private
sector spending, lending, investing and employing.
The question is: Is that what has actually happened?
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/03/09/stimulus_or_sedative