[seanmcdirmid]

Stimulus is more about wealth redistribution in times of duress, when income equality is seriously out of whack. The only problem today is that the money is coming from low interest loans from China vs. heavy taxes on the rich (as during the Great Depression).

The flipside of stimulus spending is supply-side economics (or Voodoo economics according to the elder Bush), where cutting taxes magically increases revenue since there is more economy to tax. In reality, they basically drive up inequality, though either position can be useful in moderation and both are incredibly damaging when used too much.

Neither technique is based on scientific theory, rather they are more like strategies or heuristics to be used in managing the economy that are based more on experience and perhaps ideology. Economics is not a hard science, its a social science. So is forecasting their effects, or forecasting future economic behavior; without stimulus unemployment might have been worse, meaning Obama could have been more optimistic about the future outlook of the economy at that time.