I have spent several days now talking about the largest economy in the world, the US, and criticizing the economic policy choices that have been made there. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal came out with an article that essentially justified my position. The article, written by Bill McGurn - a most respected financial columnist - focused on the claim that the Obama administration has “saved or created” a certain amount of jobs as a result of the stimulus.
The focus is not necessarily on what that number is (Obama puts it at 150,000 so far, and wants to add an additional 600,000 to that category), what is important is the fact that there is no way to tell how many jobs were “saved” as a result of the stimulus – it’s an arbitrary number and the media has fallen for it, time and again.
Another smokescreen the administration has put up was the reporting of the job numbers. When Obama talks about “creating” jobs, he does not tell you that a person, who was unemployed from a job paying him $100 per hour for example, is now on the government roles as a “temporary” worker, making $9 to $15 per hour. So while the numbers of the unemployed are going up at a slower pace now, it’s not like the Obama policy has managed to turn water into wine…
The focus is not necessarily on what that number is (Obama puts it at 150,000 so far, and wants to add an additional 600,000 to that category), what is important is the fact that there is no way to tell how many jobs were “saved” as a result of the stimulus – it’s an arbitrary number and the media has fallen for it, time and again.
Another smokescreen the administration has put up was the reporting of the job numbers. When Obama talks about “creating” jobs, he does not tell you that a person, who was unemployed from a job paying him $100 per hour for example, is now on the government roles as a “temporary” worker, making $9 to $15 per hour. So while the numbers of the unemployed are going up at a slower pace now, it’s not like the Obama policy has managed to turn water into wine…
