But media is just one piece of the puzzle. The other is stupidity. When I first started in the news business — a real rookie — I was told to write to a seventh grade level. When I left the business, guess what we were supposed to be telling the cubs? Second grade. People are willfully dumb. They distrust erudition, fact-based and non-emotional approaches to issues. The big knock on NPR over the years was rarely that it was “liberal”. Only a few country rubes and ridgerunners actually thought that. It was boring. Oh dear Lord, how I have come to loathe that word. Boring. What did Pop say when I was a kid? “Only boring people get bored” and “As long as there is a book…ANY book…boredom is not an option”. But America doesn’t roll that way any longer, Ed.

Today, we nominated candidates for the highest office in the land who care about “ejumacation” and candidates for the second highest office who can’t think of a single book, magazine or Supreme Court case. You know. The ones who say you can’t trust all those “facty” types.

It’s not the insane who are running the asylum. It’s the dumbs.

Jim

CBO’s Estimates of ARRA’s Impact on Employment and Economic Output

Looking at recorded spending to date along with estimates of the other effects of ARRA on spending and revenues, CBO has estimated the law’s impact on employment and economic output using evidence about the effects of previous similar policies and drawing on various mathematical models that represent the workings of the economy. Because those sources indicate a wide range of possible effects, CBO provides high and low estimates of the likely impact, aiming to encompass most economists’ views about the effects of different policies. On that basis, CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2010:

They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product by between 1.1 percent and 3.5 percent,
Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.9 percentage points,
Increased the number of people employed by between 1.3 million and 3.5 million, and
Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 1.8 million to 5.0 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers).

You assume that the sole goal of the law was to create make-work jobs. That’s not correct. The goal was to save the American economy, and save a lot of jobs that would have been lost otherwise.

Since you start from an erroneous assumption, your math is wrong. You’ve used the wrong equation.

Here, let me explain:

GDP for the U.S. is $15.09 Trillion.

1.1% of that = $0.16599 Trillion, or $165,990,000,000.
3.5% = $528,150,000,000.

So, in addition to creating millions of jobs, the stimulus added to our economy between $166 billion and $528 billion, in three months of 2010 alone. We’re getting back much more than we spent, in stimulated growth. In three months we may have gotten back $500 billion (that’s a half trillion), on an investment of $800 billion — and the paybacks continue, quarter after quarter.

Got an economics text to figure out how many jobs come out of a 1% increase in GDP? And that is in addition to the direct jobs your source used for calculating.

That stimulus saved the nation, it probably saved your job. Don’t deny it.

You know that old saw about how figures don’t lie, but liars sometimes figure? You got caught by one of those liars figuring.

Actual jobs created were between 3.5 million and 1.4 million. Source :CBO