People often ask why I put so much political humor on this site. The easy answer is that I like a good joke.
But I also find that some cartoons and jokes do a very good job of helping people understand economics. I’ve always liked this cartoon, for instance, because it cleverly illustrates the impact of government handouts on the labor market. And looking at that cartoon is a lot quicker than taking a class about labor economics.
Well, you can also skip the class about public finance. Here’s a cartoon that shows the economic burden of government “stimulus” spending.
Very funny and very intellectually sound. Indeed, the only thing that would have made the cartoon even better would have been showing that the jockey became bloated by eating the horse’s food. But I reckon it’s not easy making multiple points with one picture.
Anyhow, I’m disappointed that I didn’t notice it at Reason.com a couple of years ago when the debate on the faux stimulus was taking place. It probably would have helped more people understand that you don’t boost economic performance by draining resources from the productive sector of the economy to finance a larger government.
By the way, if you want to understand in greater detail why the cartoon is accurate, this video on Keynesian economics is helpful, as is this video explaining the failure of Obama’s $1 trillion boondoggle.
Oh this is just toooo good!
It should be changed from, “You heard him…” to “You heard me…”
Any stimulus would have been misdirected and ineffective, even if guided by a desire to invest wisely. Obama’s stimulus had none of those characteristics.
( blog.american.com/2012/01/11-stunning-revelations-from-larry-summers-secret-economics-memo-to-barack-obama/ )
01/23/12 – American.com by James Pethokoukis
11 stunning revelations from Larry Summers’s secret economics memo to Barack Obama
=== ===
[edited excerpt]
1. The stimulus was about implementing the Obama agenda.
The short-run economic imperative was to identify as many campaign promises or high priority items that would spend out quickly and be inherently temporary. The stimulus package is a key tool for advancing clean energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments.
2. Team Obama knows these deficits are dangerous (although it has offered no long-term plan to deal with them).
Closing the gap between what the campaign proposed and the estimates of the campaign offsets would require scaling back proposals by about $100 billion annually or adding new offsets totaling the same. Even this, however, would leave an average deficit over the next decade that would be worse than any post-World War II decade. This would be entirely unsustainable and could cause serious economic problems in the both the short run and the long run.
=== ===
It is a wonderful cartoon, isn’t it, glad you reprinted it.
But what makes it one of the very best is that it makes just one point very clearly. If you try to get it to also make another point, then the clarity of the message is diluted, it loses impact!
So a separate cartoon showing the economic stimulus jockey became bloated by eating the horse’s food would indeed be a great idea…
I think the best stimulus cartoon would be a giant fan (stimulus) placed in front of a wind turbine (the economy) and politicians connecting the fan wires to the electricity being produced by the turbine. The house powered by the turbine could be labeled “consumers”.
It would require some elementary knowledge of physics to understand but even Al Gore types would get it (or would they?)
A variation would be a stimulus light bulb in front of a solar panel, again politicians connecting the wires at the inauguration ceremony. Having Al Gore in the corner yelling “It’ll only work if you use an efficient CFL bulb”, would make two jokes in one picture.
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[...] Post-post-postscript: Since I’m sharing cartoons, I can’t resist recycling this classic about Keynesian stimulus. [...]
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[...] Since I’m sharing cartoons, I can’t resist recycling this classic about Keynesian stimulus. Share this:TwitterFacebookPrintEmailMoreStumbleUponRedditDiggLike this:LikeBe the first to like [...]
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The cartoonist is the excellent Scott Stantis. Because you didn’t link to him, or even said his name.
@Donna B.
I guess that’s my fault, I just pointed out this cartoon at Reason to Dan, but didn’t bother to find out who to give the credit to… Sorry!
Scott Stantis does indeed deserve the richly-deserved plaudits for this.
@Donna B, @crisbd, As far as I can tell, every cartoon posted by Dan includes the signature of the cartoonist. And he often lists the cartoonist by name, at least once he gets familiar with his/her work.
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I agree with Katherine.
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