An interesting survey...

For all the liberals out there, who think the stimulus (aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) passed by the Democrats and Obama was sound policy, here's some ammunition for your next argument with a Tea Party member.

In short, there's a group (IGM Forum) that polls "distinguished experts with a keen interest in public policy from the major areas of economics," chosen to be "geographically diverse, and to include Democrats, Republicans and Independents as well as older and younger scholars....who are all senior faculty at the most elite research universities in the United States." The goal is to "explore the extent to which economists agree or disagree on major public policy issues."

This time, they asked whether unemployment is lower because of the bill and whether the cost of the bill was worth it. Here's link with the results, but the bottom line is that over 90% think unemployment is down because of ARRA, and only ~15% think that it was not worth the long term cost (~30% are unsure.)

To be honest, I'm a little surprised there was much support for it among the economists polled. I kind of agree with the person who responded "how can anyone imagine that this question is answerable?" But it seems the top economists in the world think it was/is good policy. Here's the link for anyone who is interested to the poll, which has all of the numbers as well as some very brief comments by some of the professors.

http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4Xi