Saturday, November 7, 2009

What A Surprise: "Jobs Saved" Number Bogus

What A Surprise: "Jobs Saved" Number Bogus

From the November 6, 2009 Sacramento Bee:

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

That total represents more than half of CSU's statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

"This is not really a real number of people," CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. "It's like a budget number."

That certainly was not the way Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described it at a news event with Vice President Joe Biden late last week, where he focused on people, not budgets.

"Anyone that criticizes the stimulus money should talk to those 100,000 people that have retained their jobs or gotten jobs because of the stimulus money, especially the 62,000 teachers that have kept their jobs or gotten jobs," Schwarzenegger said.

Count on RINO Schwarzenegger to help the Democrats with their campaign of deception.

There's no question in my mind that properly done, a governmental spending package could be a stimulus to the economy. But so would a tax cut, especially if it was targeted to American-made goods or industries. But the porkulus that Congress passed seems to have been neither an honest Keynesian stimulus, nor particularly effective as a Laffer Curve tax cut.

No comments:

Post a Comment