CBO: Stimulus added up to 3.3 million jobs

I don't think Obama is stupid enough to ever use those "figures" to help get re-elected.

Even the argument, "I know things are still bad, but they'd be a lot worse if I hadn't done this, this and that..." is a pretty tough sell, even if he's right.

 

A couple years ago, one of the board conservatives - I think it was Mizzou - was engaged in a debate here about torture.

The idea advanced by the board progressives was that even if torture saved American lives, you can't examine that in a vacuum. You have to compare it to how many lives would have been saved compared to an alternative means. Multiple board conservatives - and Mizzou, I apologize if it wasn't you, but I swear you were part of the chorus - staunchly said they didn't care. Lives saved were lived saves. All the rest of it was just book learnin' noise.

But now, "jobs created" aren't really "jobs created," because we have to compare it to jobs created under a hypothetical alternative.

Same posters.

 

Wow, I'm glad we're comparing apples to waterboarding...

 

Don't misdirect.

Why is it different?

Why did you only care about American lives saved, not American lives saved compared to American lives saved under an alternative intelligence-gathering scheme? You were adamant about this. The alternative was irrelevant. Lived saved. That's all that mattered.

But now you don't care about jobs created unless it is compared to an alternative jobs created scheme.

What's different?

 

Because in a few years, we'll be paying the interest payments on the debts from those jobs, and that may well come at the cost of some families being able to put food on the table. If you are going to argue that it "saved lives," you have to accept that opportunity cost may be lives lost.

 

Dick, I love a good debate/argument, but I'm not getting into a torture debate.

Keep convincing yourself that it was a good comparison.

 

Oh, it's not a torture debate.

If you want to tell me that torture saves more lives than the next-best alternative, that's a torture debate.

This is a case in which you conceded that the next-best scenario might have saved more lives - but you said it didn't matter. All that mattered was that torture saved lives. You were appalled that anyone might think differently, that anyone might want to compare it against the next-best alternative. Don't you people understand? Torture saved lives. Nothing else matters.

Why is the logic different when it comes to jobs created? Why do you now think it is important to measure it against the next-best alternative whereas you didn't think that was important in a different situation, torture?

 

If you want to argue, I'll gladly take you out on the Dawson vs. Clark 1987 NL MVP debate...

 

I wonder what they economy and the deficit would look like had the United States not declared an unnecessary and foolish war on Iraq. A war which the great republican Bush-Cheney administration paid for by spending the Clinton budget surpluses and by financing the war with massive debt-adled spending. Spending not off set by increased revenue or decreased spending on other budget items. Maybe the real-estate bubble would have leaked rather than burst had the right-wing chicken hawks been prudent with young American lives and resources.

But for Iraq, this country would be bigger, richer and more united. Thanks Bush-Cheney for your lies.

 

I don't accept for a second that paying for the stimulus will cost lives in the future, considering the vast wealth we have in our country. It's not that the U.S. can't pay its bills; it simply doesn't have the political will to pay the bills because the wealthy (and the idiot Tea Partiers on the right whom they've co-opted) won't allow it.

The job creators will need to start creating jobs in the private sector instead of sitting on piles of money. Failing that, the answer is to raise taxes on the wealthy and create more inefficient government jobs that will, nonetheless, save more lives.

 

You trust in the 1 percenters, no, Cran?
Last time I checked, most of that "vast wealth" you're talking about was in their wallets.

 

There's no moral imperative for them to use their revenue to create jobs they see as inefficient.