Saved or Created vs. Killed or Thwarted ?
Certainly, the first (Saved or Created) is what the Obama Administration has been talking up since the inauguration. Sure, one CAN figure out when a new job has been created (although the Census job hiring / firing process certainly seemed to have monkeyed with the numbers with the rumored hiring people, firing them a few days later, and then re-hiring them with a bit different job). The absolutely insane measurement of "jobs saved" is completely insane and has been debunked several times.
However, I think this post that brings up a new meme:
Jobs Killed or Thwarted
that may well give the Right a chance to fire back – especially when unemployment has continued to be well above that promised by Obama if the Porkulus was passed and that the ONLY reason why it isn’t higher is that so many workers have just simply dropped out of the workforce. And with the news that the private sector has $1.8 Trillion sitting on the sidelines, Caroline Baum writes:
When I heard last week that the White House would be announcing the number of “jobs created or saved” as a result of the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, my first reaction was embarrassment.
Imagine how Christina Romer must feel. The chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors was dressed in a cheery, salmon-colored jacket, a complement to the upbeat news she had to deliver on July 14. The $787 billion stimulus enacted in February 2009, which subsequently grew to $862 billion, increased gross domestic product by 2.7 percent to 3.4 percent relative to where it would have been, and added anywhere from 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs compared with an ex-stimulus baseline.
“By this estimate, the Recovery Act has met the president’s goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs — two quarters earlier than anticipated,” Romer said with a straight face. (More than 2.5 million non-farm jobs have been lost since ARRA was enacted in February 2009, all of them in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
And then the post goes on to describe that the numbers come strictly from computer modeling. The money line, however, is this:
“If the administration wants to take credit for ‘jobs created or saved,’ it should also accept responsibility for ’jobs destroyed or prevented,’” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business.
A politician not taking credit for downsides? Oh, just slap me for my impertinence!