Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Did the Stimulus Quench America’s Economic Thirst?

May 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
How Does Your Garden Grow - Stimulus Graphic

For the next financial crisis, what would be the best way to spend stimulus dollars? While some economists suggest a national fire sale and some pharmacists heaping helpings of hormones, an examination of how the current stimulus-dollar cascade has helped or hindered the recovery bears examination. That's what graphic artist Stanford Kay has done with buckets of data drawn from the Congressional Budget Office's scintillating bestseller from last September, "The Economic Outlook and Fiscal Policy Choices," plus the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Department of Commerce. While what strange ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Graphic Art, May-June 2011
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Next Economic Stimulus: Everything 20 Percent Off

April 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — aka the stimulus bill — was the first bold stroke of the Obama administration. Most economists agree that the act prevented the economy from plunging into a deeper recession, even a depression. But this wasn't the last recession the U.S. will face, nor will it be the last stimulus plan that Congress will pass. There will be future recessions, and future debates over what government can do to prime the economic pump. Which raises the question: What should the stimulus next time look like? The stimulus enacted by the administration was a ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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States: Playing to Clean Energy Strengths

March 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

There's a lot of hand-wringing these days about the mediocre American record on clean energy. No federal climate legislation. No federal mandates for clean electricity. And when Americans look to incentive-laden Europe or to the huge clean-tech investments being made in China and Korea, we feel like an aged, belching Geo Metro being passed on both sides by sleek bullet trains. President Obama calls it our "Sputnik moment," referring to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite into space, which kicked the U.S. space program into high gear and led to quick creation of the National ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Comparative Effectiveness Research Cornered by Foes

February 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

That's how much the 2009 stimulus bill — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — devoted to this type of research, which aims to produce better information about the costs and benefits of alternative treatment options. It differs from clinical trials that compare new drugs to placebos and treatments to control groups. It instead compares multiple treatments, evaluating both effectiveness and cost. When done well, it can both improve treatment and save money. But that may not be enough. Although reliance on comparative effectiveness research seems eminently reasonable, opposition ... Read More

More like this: Health
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Your Pork Is Actually My Policy

August 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn released a snarky report this week targeting 100 projects funded by the Recovery Act that they say have done little to create jobs while wasting a lot of federal money. Not surprisingly, about a quarter of the programs cited are federally funded scientific research, reprising a favorite McCain campaign theme from the 2008 presidential election. Then, he had it out for grizzly bear DNA. Now, it's "monkeys getting high for science." Unfortunately for the scientists involved, much is lost in translation from peer-reviewed grant proposals to McCain and ... Read More

More like this: Politics, Science, The Idea Lobby
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Are Cities Like Lehman Brothers or AIG?

November 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Philadelphia in early November 2008 was in the midst of celebrating two unprecedented victories: a World Series championship, just the second in franchise history, and the election of the country's first black president, to whom locals had given 83 percent of their votes. "In city government, we were trying to figure out which day to tell citizens we now have a $1 billion deficit," said Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter. Should they interrupt the ticker-tape parade or rain on the election party? The city's fiscal situation would only deteriorate further over the coming months, ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Job Counting Offers New Battlefield for Partisans

November 13, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

The Obama administration recently announced its estimate of the jobs created thus far by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The calculation was arguably a subjective one, converting $150 billion in stimulus spending into quantifiable benefits to individual — and potentially unemployed — people. In the administration's defense, officials said they relied on figures reported to the government by recipients of the federal money. Their total: 640,329 jobs. That number, of course, has set off fierce debate among pundits and economists for whom the jobs-counting game offers a ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Stimulus Accelerates High-Speed Rail Hopes

March 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Thanks to Barack Obama, Angelo Armenti may finally get the $250 million he’s been looking for. Armenti is the president of California University of Pennsylvania, and for the past few years he’s been touting the benefits of a new transportation technology based on magnetic levitation, which suspends trains above a track and propels them along via magnetic fields at speeds up to 300 mph. The mag-lev system Armenti touts is cheaper than others currently in existence, yet because it can climb higher inclines than light rail, take curves like a charm and has a top speed of 180 miles per ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Work Out Plan

February 26, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

As Barack Obama danced the dance of inauguration, spawning a period of national swooning that makes the normal presidential honeymoon seem like a dogfight at midnight, I couldn't sustain much interest. I had a cold (or was it some kind of flu that might turn into pneumonia?). It was the raging kind of thick-headed, laryngitic, beaten about the spine and shoulders cold (or was it flu-monia?) that makes the world an exhausting, spiteful place. America was happily celebrating its first black president; I was using every bit of the tiny amounts of energy and intelligence my body and mind would ... Read More

More like this: March-April 2009, Not the Editor's Letter, Politics
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