AnnotatedOpinions.com

[AO: Yesterday, I explained why a decision on a plan to support jobs and small businesses should not be based on whether the plan to support big businesses, and particularly financial firms, is/was successful. I stated:  

The Tribune makes the argument that there is no need for a second stimulus because either the current one is working and will continue to work as the remaining funds, as much as 70% of the total $787 billion, is appropriated or the current stimulus is not working and therefore there is no need for a second stimulus.   

This misses the fact that the first and second stimuli are not the same. The first stimulus focused on a few big businesses sectors, banking, auto, insurance, and some infrastructure. The second stimulus would focus on small businesses and employment.   

Today, Steve Chapman, writing in the Tribune, repeats the Tribune’s editorial argument from yesterday. I will not return to that argument. However, he also seems to think that the first stimulus was not effective because like football season following baseball season, baseball can’t be said to cause football. But alas, this analogy goes too far. Even if we assume that one ca not prove definitively that the stimulus is the cause of the current economic improvements, one cannot be certain that it is not the cause of the improvements in the economy. The problem here is that we don’t have a controlled experiment, or as mathematicians might say, we have an underdetermined problem.  

Here’s a better alternative to Chapman’s baseball/football analogy: When you get a flu shot and don’t get the flue this flu season, you cannot prove conclusively that it was the flu shot that protected you from the flu. The problem here is that you don’t have a controlled experiment. To have a controlled experiment, you’d need two versions of yourself that do exactly the same things and go to all of the same places and experience the same exposure to the flu virus over the course of the flu season. The only difference between you and the other you would be that one version got the flu shot and the other didn’t. Under those conditions, if the version of you that got the flu shot does not get sick but the other does, then you can conclude that the flu shot made a difference. This is what scientists do in controlled experiments. Obviously, we cannot do this with a stimulus package and our economy because the stimulus changes everything ones it comes into play and we don’t have another economy we can compare our current economy to. ]