My God, you are an idiot.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

plus when you put $x Million into fixing roads you have to buy some cement too.

No cement jobs created there.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

No cement jobs created there.

i wasn't being my normal snide self, i was just saying looking dollars/jobs is somewhat simplistic. There are goods involved. although I suppose the bulk of cost in every good is labor? but those manufacturing of goods jobs aren't centered in Peoria iykwimaittyd.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

i wasn't being my normal snide self, i was just saying looking dollars/jobs is somewhat simplistic. There are goods involved. although I suppose the bulk of cost in every good is labor? but those manufacturing of goods jobs aren't centered in Peoria iykwimaittyd.

In the cement case, it's probably not coming from offshore. With the Bay Bridget, Sidd has a point.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In the cement case, it's probably not coming from offshore. With the Bay Bridget, Sidd has a point.

how about the steel embedded in the cement? how about the cement cracking machines that break up the cement to be replaced? etc.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

how about the steel embedded in the cement? how about the cement cracking machines that break up the cement to be replaced? etc.

Not to be all Timmy and shit, but I believe you are thinking of concrete rather than cement.

Anyhoo, there are surely some material costs in any construction project, and some proportion of those may go overseas.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Not to be all Timmy and shit, but I believe you are thinking of concrete rather than cement.

Anyhoo, there are surely some material costs in any construction project, and some proportion of those may go overseas.

oh my, this again.

I grew up working construction. I'll go out on a limb and bet I've built more stuff than you. Never correct me about construction*.



*or unions, or films, or running a company, etc.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

What's incredible? You take the total amount spent and divide it by the total jobs created or saved. Wahlah, $250k per job!

And it's been a meme since the SOTU in 2009, without any revision that I've seen.

Pretty much. And $250K/job is a generous calculation.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Let's go back to this for a minute. Suppose the cost per job was something like $250K. Where does that money go? Do you think the government is hiring new bureaucrats to administer stimulus grants, and that you have three bureaucrats making $75K each for each construction worker making $25K? That doesn't work, since that's four jobs for the $250K, not one. But if it did, wouldn't that be stimulating the economy? Those people can now pay for food, and housing, and entertainment, so the money gets spent, and that's what the economy needs. How do you make sense of this $250K/job business?

Oh, where does the money go? The age old question. I don't know what's so difficult about the math. You spend X. Net jobs created (or saved).*

*this whole "or saved" stuff is dubious. We never used that metric in every day political discourse until the DEMs came in.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Depends what the money is used for. In this stimulus, a lot went to tax breaks that went in turn to savings accounts, or to paying off debts. Not much job creation there. In some gov't spending -- not the Obama stimulus, to any great extent that I'm aware -- money goes off-shore. For example, how much has been spent on the SF Bay Bridge, and how much of that has gone to creating jobs in China?

There is also the issue of "creating" versus "saving" jobs. I already commented on this, and I believe that you have done so before. Those who want to puff the "$/jobs" figure look only to new jobs created, not old ones that would have been lost.

I've registered my skepticism of the $250k/job figure, so the above is not meant to support that.

The amount of the stimulus and the jobs created or saved number comes directly out of the CBO report. The numbers are really something like $850B and 3.5 million jobs.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Huh. So he said what he planned to do, Congress voted for his plan, and it accomplished what he said it would?

No wonder people are pissed off.

No. He said if we passed the stimulus, unemployment would not exceed 8%. It has. That's why people are pissed off. And they would have been even if the 8% number had been met. The stimulus Was.Not.Popular.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

And, if the "spending crisis" is so awful, how is a ten year budget with a $400B deficit in year 10 some how deemed a serious proposal?

Put it the other way. If we are only cutting 4B over 10 years, how is the lack of spending so awful?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Put it the other way. If we are only cutting 4B over 10 years, how is the lack of spending so awful?

Because it might cut the military band budget by a third.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I grew up working construction.

I'm sure the concrete/cement thing was just a slip. Sorry to mention it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Oh, where does the money go? The age old question. I don't know what's so difficult about the math. You spend X. Net jobs created (or saved).*

*this whole "or saved" stuff is dubious. We never used that metric in every day political discourse until the DEMs came in.

Seriously. Where does it go? The government spends it on what? How do you explain this?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Seriously. Where does it go? The government spends it on what? How do you explain this?

It really is a mystery. Just like those Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work? Except the reverse, because it isn't a miracle.