I Don't Know How to Succinctly Headline This, But Let's Just Say Paul Krugman is a Lying Asshole

He attacks critics of Obama's stimulus plan by supposedly phonying up the "stimulus" cost per job created (or "preserved").

Krugman now:

First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.

Note the multiyear cost of the "stimulus" being compared to the single-year (purported) benefit of the stimulus.

Krugman then:

he average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does the administration, even on its own estimates, need to offer $500,000 in tax cuts for each job created?

Krugman himself did the same tricksy math-- taking the ten-year cost of Bush's budget/tax package -- and comparing it to the one year salary of a job.

And then he even went on to defend his bullshit, claiming that a job created by a stimulus package wouldn't be around for longer than a year (or three) so why bother taking the multiyear benefit into effect?

Notice he seems to have abandoned that rationale, and assumes that Obamajobs will last forever.

posted by Ace at 03:35 PM

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