"During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.
'You created a situation where you cannot be wrong,' said the Montana Democrat. 'If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.'"
How can you prove someone wrong if there is no numerical method of actually measuring the person's claim? Therein lies the political genius of Obama's statement. He knows this, and he also knows that the press isn't going to challenge him on it. I mean, after all, they believe he is God, as I noted yesterday, and no one is going to challenge God, right?
In a rare moment of honesty the AP notes that "the White House job claims are difficult to verify because they are based on estimates of how bad the economy might have been without the stimulus rather than actual employment data. The country has lost 1.3 million jobs since February, a figure the Obama administration says would have been far higher if not for the recovery effort." Ummmmmmmmm, WRONG! If we're going by Obama's estimates then the economy wouldn't have lost ANY of those 1.3 million jobs. Keywords here are that the claims are "based on estimates" that the Obama administration made on the economy. See this report from Obama's economic advisers that was released in January. It is entitled "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" (aka. the $800 billion "stimulus" package). Look at Page 5. It clearly states that Obama's economic advisers estimated that with the passing of the stimulus bill, unemployment would NEVER rise above 8% during the current recession. However, you can clearly see here that in May of this year the unemployment rate was 9.4%! So, if Obama's "saved or created" claims are based off of estimates that were incorrect to begin with then how does that lend validity to the numbers that he is currently pitching? According to his original claim, based on the unemployment rates his team predicted, the economy would have to have "saved" 3,265,000 jobs by now for the unemployment rate to be at 8%. Now he's claiming that he's "saved" just 150,000 jobs.
Obama's numbers are made up. Even if they were true, that would mean that each job would have cost the taxpayer $314,800. How, you might ask? Well, as of May, only about 6 percent of the "stimulus" money had been paid out. That's about $47,220,000,000. Divide that by Obama's 150,000 jobs and you have $314,800! Does that mean that each person whose job was "created or saved" is making $300,000+?!? Where do we get those jobs, 'cause I want one! And if Obama's team predicted that unemployment wouldn't rise above 8% with his "stimulus" package and the unemployment rate is now at 9.4%, doesn't that show that the stimulus package isn't working as Obama said it would?
Looks like "God" is wrong. Not only is he wrong, but he's lying to you. Are you going to continue to believe him?
Come on Patrick, that's oversimplified. It's the same way we calculate lives saved or lost by any medical intervention. You estimate based on a projection from a certain time point in the past and carry those numbers, factoring in uncertainty, into future time points. Pick BLS statistics from last fall, when Bush started the bailouts, and look at the % or real drops in employment. Assume that it will be magnified because unemployment, as I understand it, isn't linear, it compounds. You're right we don't know the counterfactual. We never know the counterfactual in ANY projection. We won't ever know what would have happened if we hadn't intervened. This is how statisticians have a job - now we can debate whether or not you think that job matters. Obama didn't make up these numbers off the top of his head; statisticians ran models and this is what they came up with. We've had a crazy year which will throw off our confidence intervals (depending on the time point you start from). So instead, just to CYA, should we just not make the projections and then no one will ever be wrong?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, your blog is starting to sound less and less like "Real Honest Thinking" and more like "I Hate Obama," which is fine, but call a spade a spade.