As most know, on January 8th, in a grocery store parking lot, a gunman, opened fire on a small political gathering.   He wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others, and killed 6, including a 9 year old child.

Our media?  Apparently falling all over themselves to be the very first to diagnose the entire event down to political ideology, caused by heightened rhetoric, hopefully with easily attacked names attached, all without anything remotely resembling even a slight understanding of the shooter.

It is impressive in not only how fast this meme started, but also the complete coverage of it.  Almost anywhere you read this news or watching it discussed on tv, the attempt to blame is either extremely obvious or being discussed as being extremely obvious.

Liberals blame Sarah Palin, which the right absolutely abhors….  And besides, according to them, the shooter was a leftist anyway (irony?).

But wait!  If you don’t like that, it’s ok, because really the level of vitriol is the real problem.  Ask the Collegian, this conversation has to take place….  after of course the author talks about Glen Beck and Fox News’ level of rhetoric (irony?).

Irregardless, this conversation is important – just listen to the investigating sheriff, and you suddenly learn it’s Rush Limbaugh’s fault.

(side bar: Notice that word “investigating” always precedes the Sheriff… as if the mere act that the crazy guy with a gun pulled the trigger in his jurisdiction, gives him the right, knowledge, or understanding of political rhetoric and its ramifications)

Ahh, the Sheriff, proving, just like Katrina where rumors ran rampant due in large part to public officials, the propensity for public officials to cast off the shackles of thoughtful and deliberate actions and act irrationally.  Just listen to the Sheriff’s words “I have a feeling” and “millions agree” – as if this would be considered “proof” of anything.  Not to mention the fact that a public official should be duty-bound and intelligent enough to know not to make things worse through public speculation.

 But I digress, because in case you didn’t know, there’s a reason for his behavior too.  The Sheriff is a leftist.  & like other leftists, whether the level of rhetoric is high or low is meaningless, because it’s time for gun control.

Neither of which will work of course, because the real problem is that violence is rooted in American culture – so basically it’s everyone’s fault….

Though Jon Stewart assures us it’s not the level of rhetoric which is to blame, & he does have friends; according to a recent poll, 60% agree with this thought as well.

But let’s do note at least one decent posting on the subject, discussing this tragedy in light of other mass murderers (small mass, think group), including the divergence between what we thought we knew instantly and what we found out (here).

Aside from the few however, it appears stating openly “we don’t know enough and will not speculate” isn’t near as interesting nor attention grabbing as the fear inducing meme that speech, tv, political rhetoric, guns, or anything else which is all around you, is in fact out to get you.

It just goes on and on and on and on….  & just like the debates about which party is more closely linked with the actions of Hitler; is it Bushitler the warmonger?  Or the Democrats and the “can’t smoke in private restaurants” crowd? 

Or arguments about who Jesus would vote for; is it the downtrodden protectors the Democrats or the “teach a man to fish” Republicans?

Or what Jesus would drive; a Prius for the environment or an F150 for a carpenter? 

All impossible to answer, all nothing more than mere guilt/credit by association, yet the fight is feverish as many try to answer this very question about one lone gunman.

& All of it presented to you, with the air of intelligent thought and analysis, by the self-proclaimed 4th Estate.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Reason review here), now has his own movie, “Cool It”:

The movie’s specific goal (here):

Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.

& Considering the only other major films such as “Inconvenient Truth” are nothing more than fear inducing propaganda, Mr. Lomborg’s rational style and willingness to deal with the reality should make for a good film.

DA Posts on Bjorn Lomborg & The Copenhagen Consensus here & here

Oil leaks into the Gulf of Mexico from the end of the pipe that was supposed to pump oil from the sea floor before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded Photo: AP

The audacity of writers will never cease to amaze me and today is no exception.

In a piece at Salon.com, authored by Andrew Leonard, and titled Gulf oil spill gas price blackmail Mr. Leonard tries to make the case that the Obama Administration should:

Ignore critics of regulation who warn of rising pump prices. They are obsessed with the wrong bottom line.

Though his only reasoning seems to be that the opponents of new regulations only came to be after a major crisis. First, he starts with some of the current opposition statements:

The International Energy Agency is frightened, reports the Financial Times that “a knee-jerk reaction by regulators, banning new offshore licensing altogether,” in response to the Gulf oil spill, will end up increasing costs for the oil industry, and “therefore oil prices.”….

This helps us understand why he uses words like blackmail and frightened…. because these people are only looking at the bottom line.   From here, now that we understand these people are greedy and uncaring for anything other than money, he moves quickly into the timing of this opposition:

…it’s impressive to see how quickly the clamor advising the White House not to go overboard on offshore regulation has flared up. The parallels with the financial crisis are irresistible: A massive failure of markets and government oversight leads to a disaster, but before the wreckage has even been cleared away, we are told that regulatory overkill will be bad for business….

What he seemingly fails to grasp is, well, with all due respect to Mr. Leonard, he is failing to grasp the obvious – people generally don’t oppose or support regulations when they aren’t being proposed at all. So this argument about timing is completely irrelevant.

Logically, people, groups, communities, companies…. all of us have enough to worry about that we don’t usually worry about those things that aren’t happening.

It’s possible the author is unaware, but most of the pro-life movement didn’t really exist until 1973 as it wasn’t necessary prior to that. Maybe he finds this suspect as well?

But logic be damned, he uses this to springboard into the current investigation to explain why drastic changes in regulations are needed right now:

…But focusing only on the bottom line without taking into account the larger picture of what could go wrong — and what is going wrong — is exactly how we ended up with a giant Gulf oil slick in the first place….

Ironically, & potentially unwittingly, he then gives reasons why major regulation change should be avoided. By trying to conflate some idea of greed into this, but still keep the appearance of some factual stance, he states some of the issues clearly and properly notices that we don’t yet know what happened.

The main reason we don’t know – the only real people currently talking are those with a stake in not being blamed and there are 3 primary private actors and a multitude of government actors. Independent investigators will sort through all parties statements, responsibilities, duties, actions, and all the rest and hopefully come to some answer as to what really took place. Until then, any newly proposed regulation will be premature and wholly inconsistent with wise decision-making.

Additionally, he never refutes the words used by opponents, because he simply can’t. Economics shows us without emotion or emotion-filled words such as “blackmail” that regulations cost businesses money and those costs have to be borne out by the consumers.

The one interesting thing he noted was about the parallel to the financial market, but here he sees reverse of reality. The parallel Mr. Leonard should easily see is that we have a government bent on adding more and more power at the federal level attempting to use fear of another crisis to grab more power before even understanding why the crisis happened in the first place. Instead, of fearing this, he seems to be concerned only for some hypothetical lack of regulation, as if that has been the problem all along.

The reality is there. Going back historically, let’s say, going way, way back to… how about 6 months ago? When fear of another financial crisis was & is still being used to add regulations on entities such as pay-day loan companies, on investment vehicles such as derivatives, on compensation of employees, and many, many more things which had absolutely nothing to do with the current crisis, his concern for lack of regulation seems oddly misplaced.

After all, this is not only the same administration which is pushing for specious financial regulations, but they are also the same group which after years of railing against the Patriot Act, when the time came to do something, they did. They reauthorized its use to maintain their power.

Please note though – it’s not just this administration. Historically, governments seek to expand their power, they use crises to do so, and once those crises are mitigated, they keep the power they promised us was only necessary under the circumstances.

Whether a terrorist event, an economic crisis, or even an oil spill by greedy business people, allowing the government to take more and more powers before we even have an idea of what took place is the perfect move for those who want reduced freedoms.

As Hayek stated:

‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

SCOTUS pick made….now here comes the fun.  From CBS, Obama stated, among other things:

“one of the nation’s foremost legal minds.”

a “trailblazing leader.”

“She has won accolades from observers across the ideological spectrum,” Mr. Obama said today, “not just for her intellect and record of achievement, but also for her temperament.”

For full disclosure, I’m a veteran of the United States Army, but it seems to me…. when Ms. Kagan, decided, as Dean of Harvard law school to ban military recruiters from campus due to “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy implemented, she did so knowing she was legally in the wrong.

To be fair, she did follow the law in that she only banned recruiters after some appeals courts stuck down the Solomon Amendment as unConstitutional, but I think the facts suggest she was knowingly following bad law because it suited her beliefs.

Now, as I frequently say, I’m no lawyer, but it seems the appeals courts which struck down the Solomon Amendment, did so without any real legal basis.  I can say this easily with confidence now as SCOTUS upheld the amendment unanimously, but even without hindsight it seemed unlikely the amendment was unConstitutional.

For over 90 years, the federal government, with lots of backing from SCOTUS, has pushed policies and even laws on recipients of federal money.  It began with a highway bill to the states, but again and again SCOTUS has stated firmly that if the federal government gives you money, they can take that money away if your group/entity/state does something with which they disagree.

I’m probably in the minority on this view, but when the Dean of Harvard Law School pushes a policy with which the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected, she likely shouldn’t be on the court.  Think about it – her beliefs and legal reasoning was unanimously rejected by the exact same court makeup that she will be joining…

But this is only the beginning and we truly know very little so far.  I’m still inclined to keep an open mind as this is only one incident and I could see an argument about following school policy as valid, but for analysis sake.

At this time it doesn’t seem even a unanimous rejection of her ideas by SCOTUS will deny her entry into a life long position from which she can help shape the American legal system for years to come.

The likely scenario is that her opponents don’t find anything truly damaging, mainly due to her complete lack of experience (less than that of Harriet Miers), and politicians scared of being called hateful or mean, never question her with the ferocity intended.  Not because she’s a woman, but because our politicians are fearful and will only risk a “meanie” tag once a firm majority is already behind them.

In an email discussion with a very interesting new friend, an idea I’ve heard before came up:  Libertarianism is sort-of childish; a Utopian dream that’s nice in theory, but not practical in reality.

It might be trivial to write at this point, but I of course disagreed.  To be fair, I believe this is completely true on foreign policy.  Libertarianism seems like a domestic political philosophy only, but more on that in the future.

On the childish part – in some ways I can see why that perception exists as well.  I’ve jokingly said before the reason libertarianism has a bad name, is because of libertarians.  The cultural norm in libertarian thinkers who draw large numbers of readers seems to be to take one basic principle and stretch it to infinity.

For instance – it’s your property, you can do with as you please.  So you can put a brothel next door to an elementary school and the only recourse should be neighbors buying the lot to out price the brothel.

To many, including me, this is stupid.  The point in giving as many freedom to others as possible, simply can not include a dissolution of society itself by subjecting populations to things they don’t want.  Also, I think they already have this type of vision in local government using SOME zoning laws.

Additionally though, libertarians do believe in contracts.  So if a bunch of people bought tons of land, they could sell those plots with any caveat they want – even religious requirement.  By buying the lot, you are signing the contract and therefore willingly entering into that agreement with those constraints.

While I firmly believe this is possible, legal, and potentially preferable, it seems like that’s a community/town.  Their issue however with government control is one of the use of force, but I think that’s due to too much centralization.  Studies have shown, more decentralization, IE – more local control, leads to better outcomes (here).  What this would mean, if we were to ever take it seriously, is that while New York might maintain 18 million people for the economic possibilities that provides, government spending and programs should be on a much smaller level.

Please note – this doesn’t mean that no federal government should exist or that taxes should only exist on a very local level, just to say that smaller communities providing for their own fire, police, education, etc, etc, etc works better than 3 million people trying the same thing.  The idea is a state tax or federal tax would be required for things such as national defense, but the majority of expenditures should be directed more locally by a mayor or city manager at a much smaller level.

So it’s not that I believe the community should completely dissipate, it’s that I firmly believe that when the government gets involved, it actually distorts the system to the point where people simply don’t take care of themselves…. or their neighbors.   I think this is backed up by basic human behaviors and thinking as well as all of our uniquely “urban” problems.

One of the human conditions which helps this continue is that of group think.  By safely removing yourself far away from the negative results the government produces with its Wars on poverty, terrorism, obesity…. kids?  People can insulate themselves in larger communities due to increased anonymity by blaming society at large, instead of assuming any direct responsibility.

Listen carefully when people argue about police abuse, or crappy government inefficiencies with social spending, or politician’s lack of values…. they place blame it lots of places, but never on themselves and usually, oddly enough, never on the voters either.

Going further, the government exploits our fears with the media willing accomplices (Politics of Fear) into giving up more control to the government and thereby reinforcing the notion that the government is the answer, when it fact it’s people.

For instance.. violent crime is down a great deal since 1990 (uptick recently, but very small and declining again), but the reporting of crime has increased on average around 500%.  Thanks to multiple 24 hour news shows, combined with a finite amount of news, sensational stories about very rare events influences people’s fears about those events.

We humans aren’t that good at evaluating risk as it is, without doing so in a very methodical way, but with the government’s various wars on everything: AIDs, H1N1, Poverty, Terrorism, Obesity, Smoking, Drugs, Cancer…. kids?  All with the media willingly pushing these sensationalized news stories, people have exaggerated fears towards rare events and minimal fears towards much more likely catastrophic events (great video here ~20 minutes).

Add to this, a general lack of skepticism and critical thinking, most people never take the time to see if their fears, concerns, or core set of understanding of the world is accurate.  I believe this is due to a lack of appropriate priorities for most people, but more on that later.*

Looking at society, you can see the fear we have in our neighbors.  For example, in lots of neighborhoods in lots of places, people will more quickly call the cops on a loud neighbor than just walk over and ask politely.  We go to court when cutting down a tree that crosses property lines, we call the cops when we think the neighbor has too many dogs, we…. we just call the cops because people are scared of their neighbors.  & not because they know about the bunker with a year’s worth of rations and ammunition, but because we continue to allow our human frailty in risk assessment to be exploited by those only seeking more power.

Additionally, we willingly take away rights from others.  The most consistent comment from friends, colleagues, strangers who accidentally started a conversation with me…. but for those I did talk to around carry conceal laws during a vote in MO had, by definition of a binary question, one of two answers. Yes or No

The interesting part of the nos was almost all used the same basic reasoning when talking to me:  “You’re fine. It wouldn’t bother me a bit if you carried a gun, you were in the military and trained.  I just don’t know about everyone else.”  Other than showing a lack of knowledge of how little an electronic technician trains on weapons, I think it shows our general distrust of others.

Not surprisingly, even when confronted with the stats that prove FL, TX, and other states did not turn into the Wild West (not that the West was truly all that “wild”) where horn honks during rush hour turned into shootouts between soccer moms & insurance salesmen, were all safely ignored.

I guess the cognitive dissonance was too much to handle because stats like those in FL & TX demonstrate that our 99.9% of our neighbors who might get a carry conceal permit are not planning to emulate Rambo on the morning commute did nothing to waver the opponents.

With all that being said – I’m proffering the idea that in an odd, perverse, but easily understandable way, government involvement, even in very charitable actions, can actually reduce our incentive to live together peacefully and take responsibility for our communities.

*On the lack of priorities, I don’t believe all people should run out and research everything I know because I think everyone should read what I read.  I think the very first rule in critical thinking that all trying to be honest analysts have to understand is that like all other humans, even those trained and educated in analysis, will still have the same frailties in their thinking process.  Potentially less pronounced, but never completely mitigated.

Therefore, when writing that peoples’ priorities seem to be off, I think our failure isn’t with not reading what I read – but in being a well rounded person by honestly reflecting and actively deciding their core values.

As a corollary to that – I believe society is teaching people right now that this is a good thing. Valueless employees ask fewer questions and do more as their told without contemplating reality and what the decision’s effects most likely are. & Even if they do contemplate and know it’s wrong, they do it anyway. Therefore people who don’t make waves, get promoted. Those who ask pertinent questions, even if necessary and correct, get ostracized.

This is not only true of our business leaders, Bernie Madoff, Enron, MCI, but our politicians as well.  Unethical leaders leading secret lives, even the corrupt politicians among us, seem to get a reprieve from the voters… so long as you’re on their side and they’re not mean.

Additionally the leadership selection process seems perverted for the same reasons the leaders aren’t what we should expect.  Someone who is arbitrary, but polite and educated, is someone a lot of people like.   In a deep seeded wish to reduce not only any discomfort we might experience, but for civility’s sake try to prevent others’ discomfort, society has conflated the ideas of social skills with leadership to the detriment of society as a whole.

On the whole, it seems our desire for civility has the unintended consequence of making us less civil and more prone to failure.

To me, and indeed historically, that a fear society & freed society are mutually exclusive.

& like all consistent lessons from history, we haven’t seemed to have learned this lesson and seem to be determined to repeat it.

Towards that end, the Wall Street Journal online published two articles on Friday, under the shared title, Undressing the Terror Threat. The first article by Paul Campos & Nate Silver explains correctly:

…The world’s greatest nation seems bent on subjecting itself to a similarly humiliating defeat, by playing a game that could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts as long as there are terrorists who want to harm Americans; and

(2) If terrorists should manage to kill or injure or seriously frighten any of us, they win.

These rules help explain the otherwise inexplicable wave of hysteria that has swept over our government in the wake of the failed attempt by a rather pathetic aspiring terrorist to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. For two weeks now, this mildly troubling but essentially minor incident has dominated headlines and airwaves, and sent politicians from the president on down scurrying to outdo each other with statements that such incidents are “unacceptable,” and that all sorts of new and better procedures will be implemented to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

Meanwhile, millions of travelers are being subjected to increasingly pointless and invasive searches and the resultant delays, such as the one that practically shut down Newark Liberty International Airport last week, after a man accidentally walked through the wrong gate, or Tuesday’s incident at a California airport, which closed for hours after a “potentially explosive substance” was found in a traveler’s luggage. (It turned out to be honey.)…

The authors make a very good point here, though I do object to the term “rather pathetic aspiring terrorist”… as I saw on a blog somewhere in retort “What you really need are suicide bombers with experience!”.

Beyond that, they then try to take some statistics too far.  Using murder & suicide rates to show how are fears aren’t lined up with a real assessment of risks, they write:

…The country’s homicide rate is approximately six times higher than that of most other developed nations; we have 15,000 more murders per year than we would if the rate were comparable to that of otherwise similar countries. Americans own around 200 million firearms, which is to say there are nearly as many privately owned guns as there are adults in the country. In addition, there are about 200,000 convicted murderers walking free in America today (there have been more than 600,000 murders in America over the past 30 years, and the average time served for the crime is about 12 years)….

Taking those numbers, they conclude that which doesn’t follow:

…Given these statistics, there is little doubt that banning private gun ownership and making life without parole mandatory for anyone convicted of murder would reduce the homicide rate in America significantly….

& Even though they aren’t advocating such a policy, they basically state that the number of guns in private hands necessarily affects either homicide or suicide rates.

I think this ignores the historical evidence that governments typically ban weapons prior to mass murdering their own citizens, but it also isn’t proven by the numbers they give.  Because regardless of how people kill themselves or others, removing the primary instrument doesn’t necessarily means those actions will halt.  Lastly of course, even that assumes the government has the ability to remove the primary instrument in question, which is highly unlikely.

Either way, overall they use the example that is hysteria over terrorism to show parallels to the war on drugs, traffic accidents, and other risks to conclude:

…What then is to be done? A little intelligence and a few drops of courage remind us that life is full of risk, and that of all the risks we confront in America every day, terrorism is a very minor one. Taking prudent steps to reasonably minimize the tiny threat we face from a few fanatic criminals need not grant them the attention they crave….

The thing is that I agree with the authors’ basic premise, or what seems to be their basic premise, that fear based policies are wrong, even though I disagree with the facts they’ve lined up and think that using terrorism as too narrow an example has severely undermined their case.

First, while it’s certainly true that the gap between objective terrorism threats and hysterical policies seems large, there are valid reasons for that.  They discuss one, which is we need to focus money on preventing mass catastrophes such as a nuclear detonation, but they fail to mention the organizations themselves and how they differ from murder in general.

It’s true, that in any free society, a lone nut, bent on killing others, will have the opportunity to do so and there’s little we can do, while maintaining a free society to prevent that from happening.

However, were terrorism and even gangs, the mob, and other criminal organizations differ is that we have to attack those organizations directly.  Dealing with each instance of terrorism as non-related criminal events is exactly what allows their organizations to gain grounds on operational abilities.  Ignoring the organization therefore, seems to dictate a increase in the likelihood of a major incident.

Outside these specific critiques however, I think our society has become very easily motivated by fears instead of reason and logic.  When we allow victims of drunk driving incidents dictate the driving laws, or say a murdered victim’s family members to seek emotional healing through a policy of revenge, or use those in the most destitute of scenarios to control medical policy… whatever it is, if  we allow fear to take a hold of our government policy, new legislation, or even on a personal level, allowing fear to control our own lives… if we allow this, we should at least be doing so with the knowledge that it’s not conducive to freedom.

Detailed Abstractions has more articles about fear based policies here, here, & here.

In a rush to ensure that no good crisis goes to waste, the Obama Administration, through the Federal Reserve and other bureaucrats are passing “laws” without even a wink & a nod to the public who didn’t elect any of these people to write laws.

In the Washington Post:

The battle to pass regulatory reform legislation in the face of intense opposition launches in earnest Wednesday morning with a hearing featuring Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who will once again champion a package of sweeping changes that only Congress has the power to make…

…But outside that spotlight, the Obama administration, and the independent agencies with which it is increasingly synchronized, are moving forward with changes that do not require new laws, but could match or exceed the impact of anything that emerges from Capitol Hill…

I guess talking to the public about things like health care, auto buyouts, and the Olympics were proving to be too difficult.  All those pesky citizens with their rights and stuff standing up in opposition.  It will be much better now that they are out of the way:

…The Federal Reserve is cracking down on Wall Street’s legendary paydays. The Treasury Department plans to require banks to carry larger capital reserves. The Securities and Exchange Commission has eight pending proposals to clean up financial markets….

…The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, is asserting authority to review bank compensation policies. There is widespread agreement that many bankers were paid during the boom for spectacular short-term results achieved by taking massive risks that ultimately produced the global crisis.

Keep in mind this is the exact same government agency who kept interest rates too low even whiles trends were predicting the internet bubble in early 2000 and continued that behavior even when the next bubble, housing, was easily spotted.  I’m sure they’ve learned their lesson.

…The Fed is expected in the next few weeks to release for public comment a proposal instructing banks to make sure that compensation reflects risk. For example, if two employees generate the same amount of profits while taking different amounts of risk, regulators would like to see more reward for the less risky approach….

Oh – this ought to be fun.  The same group who can’t be bothered to even mention that their policies might have had a negative effect are now going to be in a position to tell bankers what they can make based upon what a government agency sees as the risk associated with any particular investment.

That assumes the government has the ability to accurately define risks and define compensation.  Dealing with risks only, the government has a poor track record.  The Soviet Union was much weaker than we thought, Iraq was without weapons we all knew was there, and even in the most recent crisis, politicians pushed Fannie & Freddie right up to the edge of the cliff even as people continued to tell them the drop would hurt.

As Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan said when asked if the housing bubble was a black swan (an outlier), replied, “But to me that wasn’t a black swan; it was a white swan. I knew it would happen and I said so.”

What does Mr. Tableb know anyhow?  After all, the esteemed Mr. Greenspan said the low interest rates weren’t the problem and we all know he doesn’t have any conflict of interest in saying so.

This is the government though.  Why would they go through this exercise in certain failure without at least doubling down? (here):

…The SEC also is flexing its muscles. The commission has proposed restrictions on short selling…

Never mind the fact that short selling by itself can’t force a market go down.  Never mind the fact the government had their hands in this every step of the way.  Never mind the fact that un-elected bureaucrats are subverting the representative process of legislating by making sweeping regulatory overhauls with little oversight.  Never mind economic freedom is just as important to the human condition as social freedom.

Yep, that’s the government, telling us, “never mind”.

This just seems to be a lie that won’t quit.  At the very beginning of the Obama administration we were told, by economists, business leaders, the WH, congressional leaders, and really most people that more stimulus was needed in order to avert a major depression of the economy.  We were told, incorrectly, that this bill would keep unemployment below 8%.  Indeed, the referred to the Great Depression as hyperbole on a number of occasions to push their point.

A minority of people continued to say that we didn’t need this or want it and most Americans weren’t for spending more money, but we know the fear tactic worked.  President Obama signed on February 17th a $787 billion dollar appropriation bill to further stimulate the economy.

Since it’s signing, we also been told it’s worked well.  According to the WH it will create or save 3.5 million jobs between now & 2010 (here):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus plan will meet previous estimates to save 3.5 million U.S. jobs by the end of 2010, but the unemployment rate at that time may be higher due to further deterioration in the economy, a senior administration official said on Monday.

Vice President Biden also got into the discussion very recently (here):

He touted the administration’s accomplishments with regards to the stimulus packages. Biden said 500,000 to one million jobs have been created from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He noted that when the Obama administration took over in January, the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month thanks to the worst “bagel” in decades (yes, I’m newly addicted to the West Wing). That has slowed to 274,000 jobs.

Mr. Obama as well (here):

July 11 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.

& of course, we couldn’t have this debate without a Nobel Prize winning Economist weighing in.  Proving the Nobel Prize isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Paul Krugam weighs in (here):

Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy is stabilizing and may have bottomed out, as the government’s stimulus plan probably saved a million jobs, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman said today.

Mr. Krugman wasn’t satisfied with just praising of the administration.  Lone ago giving up up using true economic theory as it refutes his political agenda, he went further:

A second stimulus package for the economy is still needed, and should be directed at state and local governments as well as infrastructure spending, he said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. The world economy may face several years of weak growth without falling into a “double-dip” recession, he said.

What’s the issue with all these pronouncements?  Simply said, they have no proof in reality.

Currently only 15% of the money has been spent.  That deserves repeating, only 15% of the stimulus has been spent.  According to everything we’re hearing though, this prevented a depression by creating/saving jobs (here):

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama nearly six months ago contained $288 billion in tax cuts and $499 billion in new spending. So far, the administration has spent $76.3 billion — 15% of the total available.

However, even taking the 15% amount isn’t necessarily a true reflection of the spending.  One must then ask, what was the money spent on and can those expenditures be tied to jobs?

Even the answer to that is a resounding no.  Almost all of that $76.3 billion wasn’t spent on anything one would typically associate with creating wealth.  $57.3 billion being was spent on safety net, food stamps, medicare, unemployment benefits and other social programs.

Please note, this is not a refutation on social spending, that would be a completely different discussion.  Having said that, it seems obvious that paying people to stay at home is not going to create or save jobs.

The analysis can’t stop here though.  With a very small percentage of the stimulus itself being spent, the total spent also represents a very tiny fraction of the economic activity in the United States.  According to current estimates, we expect the US economy this year to produce about 14 trillion dollars in GDP.  This is lower than previous years of course, but still a staggering amount of money.

Using all the numbers we have, we can inject some very simple math.

If we assume that the in the last 6 months, economic activity is around 7 trillion dollars, 76.3 billion dollars a only a little over 1% of total economic activity.  Which means it will be about 1/2% of the economy at the end of the year, unless of course the government actually starts spending the money.

Even as small as that is, if you remove the  $57.3 billion spent on social spending, then you have a total of $19 billion, which is less than 1/2 or 1% of the economic activity generated over the past 6 months.   & that is being very nice, by assuming that all $19 billion actually went to job creation.

Luckily, most Americans already know this (here):

A USAToday/Gallup poll released Monday found that 41 percent of Americans think the spending has made the US economy better, but 57 percent believe it has either made no difference or worsened the recession that began in 2007.

But the idea is still worth repeating since administration officials continue pushing the economic changes as a success for their policies.

Simply stated, the idea that by adding 1% to the current level of economic activity to the US economy would effect it in such a way as to prevent a Great Depression is a fallacy.  A fallacy which needs to be defeated.