Thank you, Marilyn and Alan for some sensible, reflective, appropriate comments. The BER worked really well: it got a lot of money into the community quickly, kept a lot of tradespeople working when there might not have been work for them and also filled some of the infrastructure deficit inherited from an earlier government. Probably the best return on investment in the last 20 years. Win! Win! Win!

Jardine K. Jardine "Your challenge Judy is to show that the policy conferred a net social benefit, compared to what would have obtained in the absence of the policy"

Let me see: I'm a self-funded retiree on a defined benefit superannuation and a part pension. Every time it was due it was paid on the dot. Not a cent missing. All the public institutions that I rely on continued to work and remained in public hands. The local school was substantially upgraded. I had medical attention I could afford when I needed it. There was about 5% unemployment compared with well over double in Europe and America where those policies were not followed. My daughter has just returned from America which she found so run-down that bits of the Holland Tunnel kept falling to the roadway and rusty iron kept falling from the bridges. When the Global Financial Heist struck Australia I knew my bank deposit was still safe. Benefit after benefit for ordinary people in Australia - and at the end of it all a triple A economic rating.

Looking at Athens, and Madrid, and middle England, and Detroit - indeed almost anywhere in the developed world outside Australia - I thank my lucky stars we had a government that swung into action looking after US, the people, rather than the thieves who created the Global Financial Heist, and their tame political party. Murdoch's media have bought themselves a government like the ones that have emptied Treasuries and ruined the lives of millions overseas. If the voters fall for it then ruin looms for Australia too, and no doubt many of those who voted them in will blame the victims for the consequences.

Alan

Your method is just as illogical as Judy’s. She did not identify net social benefits. She merely pointed to benefits of the scheme and ASSUMED – as you did – that THEREFORE it must be justified. Anti-economic, confused, irrational.

You have failed to understand that you need to show a causal link between the policies in issue and the benefits you claim from them. Merely pointing to economic activity following government’s redistributive policies doesn’t do that, because you haven’t that any benefit
a) was because of rather than despite the policy or
b) was worth it considering the costs.

It’s a complete failure on your part to understand the basic economics in issue. You haven’t given any reason whatsoever for thinking that stimulus policies create ANY net social benefits, rather than being mere corrupt looting.

It’s easy to disprove your dopey assumption that government creates economic benefits by multiplying money substitutes. If it’s true, why not just print a single piece of paper the fiat value of which is as much wealth as will abolish world poverty? And if it's true, why only government? Why not legalise counterfeiting?

You don’t have an economic theory, what you have is a cargo cult. But at least the original Melanesian tribal cargo cultists had the excuse that the wealth they imagined themselves creating by their rituals, came from outside their societies! You don’t even have that excuse. You talk of getting money “into circulation” without understanding that all the relevant money was at all times in someone’s cash balance, and all the relevant physical capital was already devoted to uses that society valued more highly, otherwise no monetary policy would have been necessary to access it.

“Australia’s economy is now number one in the world. Thanks primarily to the stimulus packages of 2008-10…”

Superstition.

According to your confused illogic Australia would be wealthier if it blew up a major city. Think of all the money that would put into “circulation”. Think of all the economic activity that would "stimulate".

The naysayers mouth almost verbatim the unfounded lies that went unchallenged by the anti ALP media in particular News Corp
"Propaganda must not address the truth objectively...the receptive powers of the masses are very restricted,and their understanding feeble... slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward."
It may suprise some that Rupert Murdoch's mother was Jewish he was raised by his mother as a Jew and he has close ties to high ranking Israeli politicians and high profile Jewish business people.
Ironic how he uses Adolph Hitlers 'Mein Kampf' as an operating manual for his manipulation of political commentary in Australia

Come on people, the whole idea was to pay back supporters & benefactors. That is why none of the original contractors ever did anything but subcontract the work, after skimming 25% off the top.

This happened another time or two before any builder got a contract.

Just how stupid do you think the public really are?

Yes some are slow to even look, but once they wake up, watch out. How about a 6% swing?

Emperor Julian

You can see, can’t you, that it would be stupidly illogical to reason thus:
“The high priest said we should throw virgins into the volcano to improve crop fertility, and the proof that he was right, is that after we threw virgins into the volcano, crop fertility improved.”?

Well, in its logical structure, the process of reasoning that Alan, and you, and Judy and Stiglitz are all following is EXACTLY THE SAME.

When we say it terms of the high priest, and throwing virgins into the volcano, you can all see it’s illogical. But as soon as we substitute high officials of the State for the high priest, and stimulus policies for throwing virgins into the volcano, and the supposed net social benefits of stimulus policies for improved crop fertility, all of a sudden you can’t see it.

The issue is whether stimulus policies produce net social benefits, or are just corrupt state-perpetrated pillaging.

The illogic in your reasoning is:
“I observe beneficial things happening after government stimulus policies, THEREFORE
a) the stimulus policies caused the benefit (throwing virgins into the volcano improves crop fertility);
AND
b) we conclude that the costs were not greater than the benefits by simply IGNORING the costs (only the benefit of improved crop fertility is considered; not the cost in terms of throwing virgins into the volcano).

At no stage in any of Alan’s articles, in Judy’s articles, or in Stiglitz’s works do they address these logical flaws which invalidate their line of reasoning.

You know Stalin famously referred to “useful idiots”? These are the people who aided him in his corrupt abuse of power by genuinely believing in the desirability of socialism.

You, Alan and Judy are such useful idiots. The irony is that the very people who allege the necessity of the State’s monopolistic manipulations of the money supply, are the same idiots who then rightly complain that the banking system is rigged so that the State corruptly benefits the big banks and corporations by diverting to them a river of treasure fraudulently misappropriated from the working class!