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AndyDufresne wrote:thegreekdog wrote:Frigidus wrote:"The Republican/Democratic Party" is too clunky a term for the glorified one party system we've currently got running things. We need something with more punch.
RDP? I'm not creative enough to come up with a good name. Saxi has one but I can't remember what it is and it seems clunky.
Repocratic Party? Sounds like they are involved in confiscation of goods...tax payer goods?!?!
--Andy
thegreekdog wrote:and I own one of his books (I have not read it) on how technology makes us less happy.
Symmetry wrote:I don't like Nazis, even when they make trains run on time. The anti-semitic stuff is kind of a turn off.
Myth: The Recovery Board wasted $18 million to redesign Recovery.gov.
Recovery.gov is not just a pretty face and not nearly that expensive. In July 2009, after careful vetting, the Recovery Board and the General Services Administration selected a Maryland company, Smartronix, Inc., to develop our state-of-the art website. The project included redesign and construction of the website; installation of hardware and software infrastructure; hosting and operation for the website; enhanced content management; and contract labor support. To date, we have paid Smartronix $6.8 million. If we exercise all options in the contract, the bill could total $18 million by January 2014.
Myth: Why is the Recovery program spending $250,000 per job?
How about $150,000 per job? Or, letās say $500,000? Never mind that however you cut it, these cost estimates donāt actually begin to tell the whole story. Essentially, critics are dividing the number of estimated jobs by the amount of money spent in a Recovery project. So, if a highway construction project cost $10 million and created 100 jobs, the cost per job must be $100,000, or so the critics say. In a struggling economy, this kind of analysis no doubt angers many Americans. But any second year economics major could tell you how absurd this analysis is. What about the benefits of that highway project to motorists? What about the indirect jobs, the subcontractors and the suppliers that benefit? Like most other things in life, simple analysis doesnāt get the job done (no pun intended).
But when it came to presenting that data, Recovery.gov, the government's official site for stimulus information, highlighted one number in particular, posting it on the site's main page in large font: "JOBS CREATED/SAVED AS REPORTED BY FEDERAL CONTRACT RECIPIENTS: 30,383." To make extra certain of getting viewers' attention, the number itself appears in bright green.
Let's start with the 30,000 jobs themselves. The federal contracts in question represented $16 billion in stimulus spending. Assuming the number of created or saved jobs reported by each contract recipient was accurateāwhich, as we've reported before, is still an open questionāthat breaks down to $533,000 for each job. That's more than five times the projection of the president's own Council of Economic Advisers , which estimated in May that every $92,136 in government spending would create one job for one year.
So, if the $16 billion in federal stimulus contracts generated 30,383 direct jobs, how many indirect jobs were created or saved? We asked the White House, which told us they believe that for each direct job created or saved, there is one indirect job. Assuming that's right, that $16 billion created or saved some 60,000 jobs ā which still clocks in at $267,000 per person.
comic boy wrote:In a perfect world such wasteful spending would be eradicated but inefficiency and coruption suggests this is unlikely, but does it matter ? Given that the wasted money tends to flow largely in the direction of big corporations, and by extention to already wealthy individuals, a status quo is achieved providing those that benefit most then provide balance by contributing back via increased taxation.
It seems to me that a problem only occurs if this balance is not achieved , ie that the beneficiaries do not contribute back , an interesting conundrum for those who argue against high taxation for wealthy corporations and individuals.
comic boy wrote:I certainly wouldn't disagree with your analysis , the level of lobbying and consequent payback in US politics is astounding. I really think that a good first step would be to cap election spending so that no candidate starts with a financial advantage , I honestly can't see any good argument against doing so.
AndyDufresne wrote:I am going to agree with anything TGD says, since he is using the term Repocrat.
--Andy
Darth Vader wrote:All too easy.
thegreekdog wrote:AndyDufresne wrote:I am going to agree with anything TGD says, since he is using the term Repocrat.
--AndyDarth Vader wrote:All too easy.
comic boy wrote:I certainly wouldn't disagree with your analysis , the level of lobbying and consequent payback in US politics is astounding. I really think that a good first step would be to cap election spending so that no candidate starts with a financial advantage , I honestly can't see any good argument against doing so.
thegreekdog wrote:AndyDufresne wrote:I am going to agree with anything TGD says, since he is using the term Repocrat.
--AndyDarth Vader wrote:All too easy.
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