Paul M. Jones

As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula "save or create" allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a "non-measurable metric." And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.

"The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius," writes Mr. Mankiw. "You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus."

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

...

It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in.

If the "saved or created" formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.

via McGurn: The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims - WSJ.com.

Like the auto companies today, the railroads of the late nineteenth century received huge subsidies, often in the form of free land adjoining new track. Like GM and Chrysler, most of those subsidized railroads went belly up – not despite the government subsidies, but partly because of them.

That sounds bizarre, but it isn’t. Allegedly friendly governments offer their business patrons a killing embrace – do this or that, and we’ll give you more money or land or trade protection than you could possibly ask. The subsidies are so generous, responsible corporate managers will do pretty much anything to get them. Over time, the corporations acquire more and more skill at pleasing the relevant government officials – and lose the ability to please their customers.

via GM and the Railroads--Stuntz (Less than the Least).

This would have severe effects on the more than 100 million Americans who have private health insurance today:

* The government would mandate not only that you must buy health insurance, but what health insurance counts as “qualifying.”

* Health insurance premiums would rise as a result of the law, meaning lower wages.

* A government-appointed board would determine what items and services are “essential benefits” that your qualifying plan must cover.

* You would find a tremendous new disincentive to switch jobs, because your new health insurance may be subject to the new rules and would therefore be significantly more expensive.

* Those who keep themselves healthy would be subsidizing premiums for those with risky or unhealthy behaviors.

* Far more than half of all Americans would be eligible for subsidies, but we have not yet been told who would pay the bill.

* The Secretaries of Treasury and HHS would have unlimited discretion to impose new taxes on individuals and employers who do not comply with the new mandates.

* The Secretary of HHS could mandate that you provide him or her with “any such other information as [he/she] may prescribe.”

via KeithHennessey.com » Understanding the Kennedy health care bill.

The administration is determined to prop up GM as a jobs program for the UAW and Midwestern states rich in electoral votes. This frenzy will intensify as the administration's decisions deepen the debacle.

via George F. Will - Have We Got a Deal for You at GM - washingtonpost.com.

He laughs!

By tickling young gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans, researchers say they learned that all great apes laugh.

Their findings suggest we inherited our own ability to laugh from the last common ancestor from which humans and great apes evolved, which lived 10 to 16 million years ago.

via Apes Laugh, Tickle Study Finds.

Click through to hear sounds of ape laughter; I liked the chimp one the best.

Look, stimulus spending can’t work, because of one of three things happens:

1. That extra spending means extra taxes which means the whole thing is a wash. (Government spending having some “multiplier” effect unknown to consumer or business spending is a big, fat lie.)

2. That extra spending means extra debt, which drives up interest rates, which chokes off growth.

3. That extra spending means extra money being printed, which means inflation which means any growth is illusory.

Of course, there’s no rule saying you can pick only one result.

via Vodkapundit » The Grand Unification Theory of Sucking.

The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.

But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.

via My Way News - ALL BUSINESS: Bond-market rout lifts mortgage cost.

Wait, you mean you can't just print more money to make things better? Who would have thought it? :-/

thanks to Barack Obama and democrats, the US Unemployment rate is worse today than if they never would have passed their stimulus package. The Obama Administration predicted the unemployment rate with and without President Obama's stimulus package, the one that is supposed to "create or save" 3 million jobs.

Unfortunately, the red line shows the actual trend since the Stimulus was passed ...

via Gateway Pundit: US Loses Most Jobs At Fastest Rate In History Under Obama.

That was happening all over Beijing. On the old airport road that same night, truckloads of troops were entering the city from the east. A middle-aged bus driver saw them and quickly blocked the road with his bus.

Move aside, the troops shouted.

I won’t let you attack the students, the bus driver retorted defiantly.

The troops pointed their guns at the bus driver and ordered him to move the bus aside. Instead, he plucked the keys from the ignition and hurled them into the bushes beside the road to ensure that no one could drive that bus away. The man was arrested; I don’t know what happened to him.

via The Agitator.

Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.

This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.

via Dynamist Blog: Medicare First!.