Saving or Creating
May 15th 2009 19:28
I could go to my wife and say, "Gorgeous, I'm going to save us $250,000 over the next ten years!" Then she would say, "How? What are you going to cut?"
If I answered like the Obama administration, I would say "Oh, I would have spent an extra $300,000 over our current budget, but instead I'm going to spend $50,000. See, I'm saving!"
Then in ten years she would say, "So, did you do it?" and I could manufacture numbers to say, "I would have bought this and that and etc."
All of it is hypothetical conjecture. So is Obama's assertion (now probably overstated) that the healthcare industry has agreed to save the American people $2 Trillion over the next ten years. No matter how much we actually spend, he could claim that it worked in ten years: "Look, we saved it. The numbers could have actually been $2 Trillion higher if not for me!"
There would be no proof. You can't prove what you would have spent that you didn't, or why you didn't spend it. There's no cause and effect. It would be trying to prove a negative. Sure, you could claim you caused it, but it would be like the little kid watching a bully run away and saying "Ha, I scared him off," without knowing his 18 year old brother is standing behind him with his fists clenched. The real reasons could be multiple.
Then this whole claim of jobs saved by the stimulus. Today Joe Biden said it's already saved 150,000 jobs. Um, we're still seeing almost 600,000 people a month losing their jobs. There's no way to assign credit or blame, except for two things: None of the stimulus money has actually been paid out, other than 28 billion to states to meet medicaid and unemployment insurance shortfalls. The other is that this is what the White House stated would happen with stimulus with the actual positions on the curves marked by triangles:
Unemployment is right where they predicted it would be, IF STIMULUS WASN'T PASSED!
The report by Biden today was filled with the same old anecdotes. This factory is rehiring, etc. There's no proof of cause and effect. Did they get orders from companies that haven't received stimulus yet (because it hasn't been paid out) so they ordered ahead of time in anticipation?
During the campaign Obama stood in front of a TV factory and claimed that Bush's economic policies had caused the jobs in the plant to go oversees. What did the factory make? Cathode ray tubes for televisions. Um, yeah, it was Bush and not LCD and Plasma TV technology that made them obsolete!
Whenever a politician makes claims like this, always examine whether the cause and effect claimed can be proven!
"We're going to safe or create 3 million jobs." There is absolutely no way to prove this! You could get to 25% unemployment and they could claim "It could be 28% if not for stimulus!" without any hard numbers. They are already claiming 150,000 without any stimulus money being paid out using anecdotal evidence!
It's like a car going around a sharp curve with a guard rail, sliding a little but making it around without touching the rail and saying, "Wow, that guard rail just saved them!" It could have been driver skill, the tires, a better spot of pavement, handling characteristics of the car, or any other number of factors.
I'm going to end this post in six more words after this sentence! See I finished the post! Success!
You can support my blogging even more by buying my book at Author House. Unlike liberals, this is the only fantasy world I live in
If I answered like the Obama administration, I would say "Oh, I would have spent an extra $300,000 over our current budget, but instead I'm going to spend $50,000. See, I'm saving!"
Then in ten years she would say, "So, did you do it?" and I could manufacture numbers to say, "I would have bought this and that and etc."
All of it is hypothetical conjecture. So is Obama's assertion (now probably overstated) that the healthcare industry has agreed to save the American people $2 Trillion over the next ten years. No matter how much we actually spend, he could claim that it worked in ten years: "Look, we saved it. The numbers could have actually been $2 Trillion higher if not for me!"
There would be no proof. You can't prove what you would have spent that you didn't, or why you didn't spend it. There's no cause and effect. It would be trying to prove a negative. Sure, you could claim you caused it, but it would be like the little kid watching a bully run away and saying "Ha, I scared him off," without knowing his 18 year old brother is standing behind him with his fists clenched. The real reasons could be multiple.
Then this whole claim of jobs saved by the stimulus. Today Joe Biden said it's already saved 150,000 jobs. Um, we're still seeing almost 600,000 people a month losing their jobs. There's no way to assign credit or blame, except for two things: None of the stimulus money has actually been paid out, other than 28 billion to states to meet medicaid and unemployment insurance shortfalls. The other is that this is what the White House stated would happen with stimulus with the actual positions on the curves marked by triangles:
White House graph to promote stimulus, with actual numbers marked with triangles.
Unemployment is right where they predicted it would be, IF STIMULUS WASN'T PASSED!
The report by Biden today was filled with the same old anecdotes. This factory is rehiring, etc. There's no proof of cause and effect. Did they get orders from companies that haven't received stimulus yet (because it hasn't been paid out) so they ordered ahead of time in anticipation?
During the campaign Obama stood in front of a TV factory and claimed that Bush's economic policies had caused the jobs in the plant to go oversees. What did the factory make? Cathode ray tubes for televisions. Um, yeah, it was Bush and not LCD and Plasma TV technology that made them obsolete!
Whenever a politician makes claims like this, always examine whether the cause and effect claimed can be proven!
"We're going to safe or create 3 million jobs." There is absolutely no way to prove this! You could get to 25% unemployment and they could claim "It could be 28% if not for stimulus!" without any hard numbers. They are already claiming 150,000 without any stimulus money being paid out using anecdotal evidence!
It's like a car going around a sharp curve with a guard rail, sliding a little but making it around without touching the rail and saying, "Wow, that guard rail just saved them!" It could have been driver skill, the tires, a better spot of pavement, handling characteristics of the car, or any other number of factors.
I'm going to end this post in six more words after this sentence! See I finished the post! Success!
You can support my blogging even more by buying my book at Author House. Unlike liberals, this is the only fantasy world I live in
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Getting a bargain is a good thing! But when it comes down to government spending, they've never wiggled a pinky finger to save a penny, much less a few trillion here and there. B.O. (B.S.) is the biggest wasteful spender we've ever seen. How could anyone believe he's going to save one dollar or one job?