On Sep 4, 2010, at 11:35 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Sep 4, 2010, at 11:24 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>> And yet the number of unemployed workers today is bigger than the
>> number that Obama claimed would be unemployed *without* his ARRA.
>
> You're an economist of some sort, right, Shane? What's so hard about
> the concept that unemployment is lower than it would have been
> without ARR? Obama's predictions have nothing to do with it.
Of course, "preserved" is altogether different from "created." We're talking politics, not statistics, here--the likely refusal of very very many 2008 Obama voters to support him and his party this November. Counterfactuals, however plausible, convince nobody except those looking for an excuse to believe. False predictions undermine whatever lingering trust the public has in a politician's veracity. And, Jordan, in the public perception "some," when it amounts to a statistical few with little visibility, is the equivalent of "none."
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos