[ExI] jobs created or saved

[Damien Broderick]

On 11/24/2009 8:50 PM, spike wrote:

> 	Many here are science types, so perhaps you have been as entertained
> as I have by the claim by the US government that the 700 billion dollar
> stimulus bill created or saved 640329 jobs.
...
> If they meant $1.2 million per job-eon, this would be a bargain, for the
> taxes alone on a minimum wage job-eon would run into the billions.  But I
> rather suspect it was more like job-hours or job-weeks, for each of those
> 1.2 million dollar expenditures.

This is a very strange post.

1. Are you asserting that the sole declared purpose of the "stimulus 
bill" was to "create or save" jobs, and by funding them directly? It had 
nothing to do with shoring up a self-buggered financial system, etc?

2. Do you actually think that a claim of saving or creating a job might 
really mean "for a few hours"? Now it's true that some of the funds have 
gone toward time-limited employment of a couple of months, intended to 
provide some people with at least minimal job experience or get them 
back in the habit of leaving the house for work 5 days a week. But the 
way ordinary language is used surely offers a clue.

Suppose a school has two basket-weaving teachers and needs three, but 
its financing is so shot that one of the two is about to be (as they 
say) "let go", and then stimulus money is provided to retain that 
teacher and also hire the third. The govt proudly states that one job 
has been saved, and one created. Does it seem likely that this means 
"for one hour" or "for one day"?

I am not disputing the prevalence of perfidy, double-talk, mopery and 
dopery. But it seems sensible to assume the usual rules of discourse 
apply, in the first instance, and only get *really really* angry if it 
turns out that this reasonable assumption has been abused and violated.

Damien Broderick