Russ Roberts On The Failure Of Stimulus Spending

See Congressional Testimony on the Stimulus at Cafe Hayek. I especially like how he explains that after WWII and a big drop in government spending, the economy did not slide into a recession (the last two paragraphs below). Excerpts:

"There have been two explanations. One is that the economy was in worse shape than we realized. The only evidence for this claim is circular—the standard Keynesian models under-predicted unemployment.

I prefer a simpler explanation: the models that justified the stimulus package were flawed. Those models were broadly based on the Keynesian notion that the road to recovery depends on spending. In the Keynesian worldview, all spending stimulates. Somehow, subsidizing university budgets in the Midwest or paying teachers in West Virginia helps unemployed carpenters in Nevada. That may be good politics. It’s lousy economics.

This isn’t the first time the Keynesian worldview was wildly inaccurate in predicting the impact of changes in government spending. Look at the beginning and end of WWII.

Keynesians frequently argue that the military spending on WWII ended the Great Depression.

Certainly unemployment fell to nearly zero because of the war. But did the war create an economic boom? There was a boom for the industries related to the war. But there was little prosperity for the rest of the country. The war was a time of austerity. Government spending didn’t have a multiplier effect on private output. It came at the expense of private output.

What about the end of the war, when government spending plummeted?

Paul Samuelson, a prominent Keynesian, warned in 1943 that when the war ended, the decrease in spending combined with the surge of returning soldiers to the labor force would lead to “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” He was not alone. Many economists predicted disaster.

What happened? Government spending went form 40% of the economy to less than 15%. And prosperity returned to America. Unemployment stayed under 4% between 1945 and 1948. There was a short and mild recession in 1945—while the war was still going on. But the economy boomed when government spending shrank and price controls were removed."