Alan
It might be helpful to consider some examples.

What about a public works program for the government to build artificial reefs on every beach in Australia? This constructive activity building infrastructure would provide point-break quality surf instead of beach-break quality surf, which is more amenable. Would this justify stimulus policy funding? If not, why not?

How about a railway through the Great Stony Desert? Obviously the data don’t exist because it hasn’t been done yet, so you’ll have to answer by reference to your theory.

But hang on. The data don’t exist for any of the projects before the government funds them, do they, because the whole point of the exercise is that *but for* the funding, they wouldn’t be undertaken?

And since your theory is that the data prove your case, doesn’t that prove your theory wrong even in its own terms? If not, why not?

P.S. The expression “aggregate demand” and “boosting demand” I cited are from the OECD document and are pure Keynesianism. They contradict you in claiming that theory is not used. If you’re not using aggregate demand or boosting demand as the criterion, you still haven’t said how you know whether the policies are justified. An inner voice, or unspecified data, told you so perhaps?

PPS None of those documents addresses itself to *whether* the stimulus policies produce a net benefit to society, rather than merely looting A to satisfy B. They only try to measure *how much* the governments spent, and how much benefit it was. But if this is not so, please refer us to the specific data that you say make your case.

Obviously if your argument takes the form of sending me on an errand to construct your argument for you, it means you’ve lost. If you can’t show evidence and reason, you should have the decency to concede the general issue.

SPQR
Who is the Wicked Witch of the West, by the way?

If you do as Poirot suggests, you will find a series of threads in which ...

(cont.)

... she was brought to a full stop by questions she can’t answer without disproving her own argument. To any person interested in the truth, this would be a sign to *re-think* their demonstrably erroneous belief system. But bitter sneering is all Poirot’s response.

* * *

The exact similarity of the intellectual method of the Keynesians and warmists is remarkable, isn’t it? Both enter with a bluster of supercilious patronising statements to the effect that government has superior knowledge and goodness, necessary for the most beneficial interventions. When questioned they refer off to high officials, replete with reams and thickets of statistics gathered at public expense.

But the law against misleading and deceptive conduct only applies in trade and commerce, not to politicians and bureaucrats, who don’t need their marketing statements to be true. Not even James O’Neill thinks that politics is about the pursuit of truth LOL. Politicians only need a pretext for a stimulus policy, preferably covered in the appearance of science - they don't need it to be true.

The intellectual class themselves, in their comfortable offices, far from any of the hard, heavy, dirty, dangerous or irksome work that actually pays for them, amuse themselves pootling on their computers compiling and collating statistical operations. But, as we have just seen, these statistics do not, and are not capable of proving what the Keynesians or the warmists are arguing. They are multiple complete refutations away from any logical argument.

When they occasionally emerge from the groves of sychophantic orthodoxy, and into the glare of public discussion, it never occurs to them that they might meet people whose freedoms and property have been violated and spoliated by the forced interventions for which they were the main cheer-leaders. Like Alan, James O’N, Poirot, Bazz, Robert LePage, they prove nothing and assume everything. They answer any demand for reason with slovenly contempt by referring off to a whole pile of gizzard-lore and gobbledegook compiled by vested interests who have come to believe their own bullsh!t, which they are incapable of rationally defending – because it’s wrong!

JKJ,

Sorry to interrupt your self-congratulatory reverie (You seem inordinately fond of triumphal posts to yourself)

Anyhooo....I like this bit:

"...she was brought to a full stop by questions she can't answer without disproving her argument. To any person interested in the truth, this would be a sign to *re-think* their demonstrably erroneous belief system. But bitter sneering is all Poirot's response."

Could be...

On the other hand, it may be that she declines engagement with you because she finds you a tiresome windbag, full to the brim with repetitive and turgid rhetoric.

Who knows?

: )

Poirot
We are amazed at your latest proof that government stimulus policies create net benefits for society, that the world faces detrimental anthropogenic global warming that policy can improve, and that minimum wage laws make the working class better off.

It's not the rhetoric that stops you from engaging, it's the logic.

All
Look, let's face it. There is no evidence or reason to think that stimulus policies are anything other than is obvious on the face of it, namely political redistributions of other people's wealth, handed out to political favourites, wasted on a grand scale, and backed up by nothing but political expedience and spurious Keynesian nonsense that is flatly incorrect. And that's only looking at the Keynesian *cure* for recessions: their theory of what causes them is even more mendacious.

Meanwhile down in the valley, us peasants are discovering that 40% of
the gold coins in our pocket have disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Oh well, the village print shop is working double shifts, and the
blacksmith is busy making horse shoes.
The rest of us are eying our backyards and wondering if it could grow
enough veggies to keep us keeping on.
At least we won't be paying tax to keep the economists waffling.

JKJ,

<< "[Poirot] it's not the rhetoric that stops you from engaging, it's the logic>>

Couldn’t agree more--Poirot starts from the premise that if you make enough noise the causal reader will interpret it as a counter argument.

In a recent AGW thread I pointed out the loopy CVs of some of the warmist "experts" and she *“debunked”* it by linking to the site showing/supporting exactly what I had quoted--I would have pointed out how illogical it was, but I had to attend causality having injured my back ROFL.

Poirot
Don’t worry about what the WA govt says. They cannot force you to relocate east--beside seven eastern premiers are wholeheartedly in favour of you staying put.

Really busy “must zip”.