Hi Billy, On Sep 10, 2010, at 11:13 AM, [email protected] wrote: > With a few exceptions, the data show little correlation between the level of > unemployment and stimulus spending. In fact, the opposite is true. The > federal government has given far fewer stimulus dollars to states with high > unemployment than it has to states with low unemployment. > > Annoying, but not necessarily surprising. The most anti-work states tend to be the most dysfunctional politically, which is why they have both high unemployment and few shovel-ready projects. > The Obama administration was wildly successful if its objective was to spend > a lot of money in a short amount of time. Whether that money has done or will > do anything for the people that need it most has proven far more elusive. As > the saying goes, You can have it fast, you can have it good, or you can have > it cheap -- pick two. > That's a bit of a stretch. Does being in a state with the highest unemployment make you more needy? A better criteria would be how *long* someone has been out of work, and whether any of those were helped by the stimulus.
Of course, that's harder to measure. And as in most journalism, people focus on facts that are easy to obtain (e.g., per-state/per-capita) not necessarily the most relevant. :-( -- Ernie P. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
