Michael Steele’s Bad Math
One unfortunate aspect of human psychology is that people aren’t good at understanding magnitudes that are far outside the range of ordinary experience. Everyone’s very clear on the fact that 50 eggs is a lot more eggs than seven eggs. But the difference between a $50,000,000 budget item and a $7,000,000 budget item tends to get fuzzy. And it gets worse when you start using words in place of numerals. $5 billion is a lot more than $5 million—$4,995,000,000 more to be exact—but the two words sound similar and look similar on the page. Which brings us to things like this bit of rounding by Michael Steele:
When families keep the money, they spend it, save it, or invest it. And the private sector economy benefits when families and businesses buy consumer goods or invest it for the future. But when Washington spends the money, some of it may flow into the economy, but all too often, much gets wasted.
Democrats in Congress want a one-trillion dollar spending bill. You’ve heard about the pork-barrel programs they want to fund… 45 million dollars for ATV trails and removal of fish passage barriers is one that caught my eye. Exactly what is a fish passage barrier and why does it cost 45 million dollars to stimulate the economy with it?
There are about a million things wrong with this argument (to be saved for future posts) but just note that there’s a big difference between rounding 85 cents up to one dollar and rounding $850 billion up to $1 trillion. Nobody would call a candy bar that costs $1 a “$150 billion candy bar.” And yet $1 is, in absolute terms, closer to $150 billion than $850 billion is to $1 trillion. Of course that comparison isn’t entirely fair, the percentage difference matters as well. But the fact remains that when you’re dealing with very large magnitudes, these kind of decisions to round up or down—especially when the decision is made to add rhetorical force to the point—can wind up obscuring huge actual quantities. It’s true that if you round the recovery package’s cost to the nearest number you can express with one numeral followed by a word that it’s a “$1 trillion” plan. But it actually costs much less than $1 trillion.
Meanwhile, it’s worth saying that to call it a “one-trillion dollar spending bill” is just a flat-out lie. There are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax cuts in the package. Some of them are there for good reason, others we’d do better to do away with. But either way, they’re there. Anyone who’s calling the bill a pure spending package is lying.
56 Responses to “Michael Steele’s Bad Math”
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February 8th, 2009 at 8:59 am
The OMB says that the debt service when included will make this bill cost over a total of the magic 1 Trillion barrier.
It is all borrowed money and that doesn’t come free.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:09 am
This is kinda silly. When you’re rounding, percentages do matter more than absolute quantities . . .
and on the tax cut/spending front, I seem to recall a big push by Democrats in the 90s to do precisely this: to call tax cuts a form of “government spending,” the better to resist them.
Objectively, that was probably cheesy rhetoric, and Steele’s rhetoric is equally cheesy. But it’s inevitable cheese. If the Reps were pushing a 600 billion capital-gains cut with 250 bil of military spending, you can be damn sure we’d call it a “1 trillion dollar tax cut for the rich.”
February 8th, 2009 at 9:11 am
And yet $1 is, in absolute terms, closer to $150 billion than $850 billion is to $1 trillion.
I cringe every time you think in mathematical terms.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Nobody would call a candy bar that costs $1 a “$150 billion candy bar.” And yet $1 is, in absolute terms, closer to $150 billion than $850 billion is to $1 trillion.
But “absolute terms” would be an idiotic metric in this context because this affects all U.S. individuals on something like a pro-rata basis, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with rounding 850 million to a trillion in this context, given the cost of debt (comment #1) and given that, in reality, no one really knows how much this spending will really “cost”. So “about a trillion” is a perfectly-normal way of characterizing the size of this spending, at least when normal humans are engaging in normal conversation. (YMMV)
This was a very weak (and weird) line of attack Matthew.
P.S. As for the point that it’s not a “pure spending” bill because there are tax cuts in it, that’s also strange, because countless (D)s – including you – convinced me in the early Bush years that tax cuts were “spending” and nothing but. Yet now you’re saying they’re not. Can I hold you to this or does it only apply during (D) leadership, when you feel the political imperative to make the cost of something sound as minimal as possible?
February 8th, 2009 at 9:17 am
As Obama’s people have started to point out, the kind of stuff Steele is talking about (like the $45 million) amount to 1/7th of one percent of the total. Now that they have had to do the actual cutting of the overall size, the only things they cut of substance are the parts most defensible. The mendacity is stunning.
Oh, and Rework, Matt point is still the same: this isn’t $1 trillion in spending (and the criticisms Steele launches are much more relevant toward the tax cuts Republicans keep trying to add. There’s a bigger danger that those won’t “flow into the economy”—as opposed to food stamps, which absolutely would, but were cut anyway.)
And, since we’re talking about massive loss in GDP, Steele’s “concern” here is highly disingenuous.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:32 am
When we’re talking about the net effect on the Treasury, tax cuts and actual spending can be equivalent. And when you are making the rhetorical point that tax cuts and rebates are not “free,” that’s a fair point in a normal budget debate.
But the point here is that, as a matter of stimulus, tax cuts and spending aren’t the same thing. Some tax cuts are more effective than others, of course, but most are less effective than most any kind of spending. Some spending is meant to give you a tangible product at the end (infrastructure) and some are meant to help keep people from making otherwise large cuts (aid to states).
So, in terms of the debate, there is a pretty big difference here between a discussion about being fiscally responsible (which Republicans had no interest in being back when it would have made sense) and about stimulating the economy through federal government debt.
Matt is talking about the rhetorical games being played, and, yes, Steele is being extremely dishonest.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Note to M. Steele:
Here in the Pacific NW, we know what a fish passage barrier is. Taking them out is expensive because it can involve replacing a pipe with a bridge.
You can argue it ain’t worth the cost, but we know what they are.
And the early morning commenters here are off base: rounding up is a bad habit. We should not encourage bad math.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:35 am
My problem with this whole line of argument is I don’t know why the Democrats don’t just respond: Your party spent the last 8 years increasing the deficit by trillions of dollars while screwing up two wars and running the economy into the ground, why do you think you are entitled to a measured response?
February 8th, 2009 at 9:42 am
So, you’ll slam the black guy, but not the white Senate Majority Leader for saying the same thing? Interesting.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:47 am
If the Democrats were proposing 1 Trillion in spending, it would still only be 2/3 of what we need.
Spending IS Stimulus. There is no other way to stimulate an economy with marginal tax rates in third-world country territory.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Wow, by Matt’s reasoning nearly every newspaper including many democrats are bad at math. Even Matt is bad at math since he rounds big numbers up which in absolute terms makes no sense. Perhaps it is not so much the rounding up but the fact they’ve chosen a number that sounds so much bigger than 850 billion. If they’d only chosen 999 billion it would be much more appropriate.
And anyways when did determining the appropriateness of rounding fall into math’s domain. I learned sig figs in Chemistry but deciding when and to what extent you round big numbers doesn’t have much to do with math.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:49 am
There is no world in which ’rounding up’ should change a number by 150,000,000,000.
See it written out like that? Tell me how you can round off that much.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I am more interested in the argument that taxpayers are better at efficiently spending money than individuals or corporations. Evidently not. How much did corporations waste on stock buybacks when prices were inflated? Buybacks have pretty much disappeared now that the stock market is closer to fair value. Example: Starbucks. How much did the middle class waste on Harleys and houses that were inflated by 3-4X real value? Example: Lehigh Acres, FL (See Sunday NYT) How much did ‘qualified investors’ waste on unhedged hedge funds? Example Bernie Madoff. In fact the best place for us to waste money is with government. Say it loud.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Good catch, Brain-Dead. If this post proves anything, it’s that Matt is racist.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Paulk,
“Matt is talking about the rhetorical games being played playing rhetorical games”
That’s better.
soullite,
“There is no world in which ’rounding up’ should change a number by 150,000,000,000.
See it written out like that? Tell me how you can round off that much.”
Well, by using math. Rounding up a number to the nearest X can indeed change it by 150,000,000,000, for any X bigger than 300,000,000,000. I’m not sure what you guys think rounding up means or is supposed to mean, but it’s a trivial mathematical operation, not something laden with moral content.
Clinging to this weird argument just prolongs the weirdness. Defend the spending if you must (with actual, y’know, arguments grounded on the nature of the spending), but this whining about rounding up a large number to a slightly-larger number isn’t really an argument for anything.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am
soullite,
The world’s gdp is 55 trillion. Or to be more correct fifty four trillion five hundred and eighty four billion. Come on your just being disingenuous because rounding up is making the dems look bad. I am sure we wouldn’t be having this problem if the stimulus cost 600 billion and democrats were calling it half a trillion.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Well Steele should know what a fish passage is, he was lt. governor in Maryland and we have fish passages in Maryland too. Not that he paid attention to anything while he was lt. governor.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Perhaps it is not so much the rounding up but the fact they’ve chosen a number that sounds so much bigger than 850 billion.
Why yes, it’s that Steele, instead of rounding say $780 billion to $800 billion, has chosen a number so much larger than the actual price tag that what he did is better described as “flat-out lying” than rounding up. Especially because, since the new compromise seems to be $780 billion with $315 billion in tax cuts, the amount of spending in that bill is closer to $0 than to $1 trillion. Would it be OK for Democrats to round to the nearest trillion and say that the compromise contains no spending at all?
A lot of real morons in Yglesias’s comments lately; I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks they can defend Steele here.
Oh, and this is the “other stuff” Yglesias was talking about, but Steele is a complete economic illiterate. When the government spends money it finds its way into the economy by definition. What does he think the economy is? Whereas, when families save money, it’s not going into the economy, because it’s sitting in a bank that’s probably afraid to lend it out. That’s why government borrowing and spending does more to stimulate the economy than tax cuts, much of which are going to wind up sitting idle in checking and savings accounts.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Sonic,
Actually, no. He’s using rhetorical games to demonstrate that Steele is being disingenuous. As I’m sure you noticed, Matt actually points out that absolute is not the same as percentage and that this isn’t an entirely valid way of talking about numbers. And while it’s not a valid way of talking about this mathematically at all, it is a valid way of talking about Steele’s rhetorical game.
Steele rounds up in percentage terms, then utilizes absolute terms to explicate the problems. In other words, the difference between $850 billion and $1 Trillion isn’t as great percentage-wise as $1 and $850 billion, but neither is $45 million and $1 trillion (or even $850 billion). It’s a rhetorical bait and switch, which is the point Matt is (albeit somewhat opaquely) making.
The point of Steele’s criticism is that there is a massive amount of waste in the bill, but his evidence doesn’t even begin to support that conclusion. (None of the Republican attempts at specifics do.) What’s $44 million between friends? Nothing, actually, when we’re talking about a difference of $150 billion.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Practically every Republican I’ve seen talk about this on TV and online mentions that debt service puts it over $1 trillion, which I’d guess is true. I support the stimulus but don’t really get the outrage here.
Now, a smart Democrat up against this argument on TV could say, “Yes, and you’re including debt service in that number — it’s actually $850B in spending. Do you have any idea how many trillions of dollars in debt Bush’s chronic underfunding of the government generated in interest alone?”
February 8th, 2009 at 10:32 am
“Actually, no. He’s using rhetorical games to demonstrate that Steele is being disingenuous.”
Well, we agree he’s using rhetorical games anyway.
“As I’m sure you noticed, Matt actually points out that absolute is not the same as percentage”
Wow, he ‘actually’ points that out. Well good for him. Gold star for the brilliant economic commentator.
“and that this isn’t an entirely valid way of talking about numbers.”
??? Do tell, what is a ‘valid way of talking about numbers’? I have a PhD in math but you guys are getting too advanced for me.
Again, normal people in normal conversation have no problem with shorthand like rounding up to the nearest round-number X when something is like 85% of X.
“Steele rounds up in percentage terms, then utilizes absolute terms to explicate the problems.”
No problem with this, as long as it’s clear what he means at any given point. Example: ‘This spending is about a billion’ (round-up), ‘and notice, 75 million of it is on [stupid thing X that he wants to denounce]‘. No one with half a brain would be confused or led astray by this sort of statement, or find it somehow incomprehensible. So I’m wondering about Matthew.
“In other words, the difference between $850 billion and $1 Trillion isn’t as great percentage-wise as $1 and $850 billion, but neither is $45 million and $1 trillion (or even $850 billion).”
I’m sure there’s a point in there somewhere, but it’s just not clear what it is. Are we going to go back and forth all day giving examples of numbers that are bigger and smaller percentages of other numbers? Because just to be clear, I understand percentages just fine, thanks.
“It’s a rhetorical bait and switch, which is the point Matt is (albeit somewhat opaquely) making.”
What’s the bait and switch exactly? If you can’t articulate this (any better than Matthew can), then who is Steele going to succeed at supposedly baiting-and-switching?
The spending is on the order of a billion dollars, and the breakdown by line-item is such-and-such. Which part of that do you find confusing or ‘bait-and-switch’ exactly?
“The point of Steele’s criticism is that there is a massive amount of waste in the bill, but his evidence doesn’t even begin to support that conclusion. (None of the Republican attempts at specifics do.) What’s $44 million between friends? Nothing, actually, when we’re talking about a difference of $150 billion.”
Silly me I’d rather not waste even $44 million, thanks. If this is the true kernel of your/Matthew’s point, all you’re really doing is smuggling in your own prior views about spending and $44 million wastage not mattering. Well some of us differ, and presumably that’s who Steele is speaking to. You don’t care about $44 million “between friends” – message received and duly noted (and opinions discounted accordingly).
Best,
February 8th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Matt Weiner:
Was harry Reid flat out lying when he said the bill was “approaching a trillion dollars”? Why would he lie like that? Someone already posted it. But here it is again, in case you missed it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGx–ZmP-0c
Moreover, Steele does not say, “the bill is a trillion dollar bill.” He says “Democrats want a trillion dollar bill.”
Is this demonstrably false? Would you object to that kind of bill as too large? I keep hearing a lot of people moaning about how the stimulus is not big enough. Would making it bigger, as per these wishes, make it sufficiently close to the trillion dollar mark to justify the rounding? At least when Reid does it? Relatedly, why is such a high ranking Democrat such a dishonest hack? Is he trying to submarine Obama’s chances? Must be angling for a job at AEI after his term is up or something. Because only a flat out liar would use that kind of ridiculous math.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Hah. Steele is on This Week right now. “The bill doesn’t create jobs, it creates work!” George S.’s response: “I’m sorry I don’t really see the distinction.”
Stephanopolous says, “but millions of jobs have been lost from private industry,” and Steele responds, “but those jobs will come back!”
Also, Steele goes on to blame the entire financial crisis on Freddy/Fannie and Congress rejecting some Bush bill in 2003.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:41 am
> and $44 million wastage not mattering. Well some of us differ, and presumably that’s who Steele is speaking to. You don’t care about $44 million “between friends” – message received and duly noted (and opinions discounted accordingly).
Um, that’s not my conclusion, Sonic. That $44 million “not mattering” is a conclusion based upon Steele’s blithe dismissal of the difference between $850 billion and $1 trillion. ($150 billion)
Perhaps I’d be willing to cut Steele some slack here, say that he was doing as you suggest and merely giving X example of wasteful spending—except this is all he has. $900 million of projects like this that he can demagogue. Fine. We can have that debate. Maybe it’s effective stimulus, maybe not.
But that’s not what Republicans are arguing against. That’s certainly not what they and the “moderates” cut. The lie of the anecdote is that it is meant to stand in for the whole. If the single piece of evidence is representative of the whole, that’s fine, and that could be a good argument against the bill. It’s not. He has had ample opportunity to offer another or additional arguments. But this is all he has. That’s why it’s disingenuous.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Was harry Reid flat out lying when he said the bill was “approaching a trillion dollars”?
Yup. Not lying as badly as Steele, because he said “approaching” (which justifies quite a bit more rounding) and because he didn’t restrict himself to “spending,” but he was lying.
Why would he lie like that?
Because the bill isn’t big enough and he wants to pretend it is.
Moreover, Steele does not say, “the bill is a trillion dollar bill.” He says “Democrats want a trillion dollar bill.” Is this demonstrably false? Would you object to that kind of bill as too large?
Jesus Christ you are a pathetic liar. He says “Democrats in Congress want a one-trillion dollar spending bill.” I’m not in Congress — you can look it up, different first name — so what I want is irrelevant to this question. If you want to pretend he’s making an assertion about what Congressional Democrats want in their heart of hearts, you can make up anything you want; I can say that Congressional Republicans to send the country into another Great Depression for their political advantages, and also that they want to rape goats, and it’s not demonstrably false by your standards.
But if we’re being serious, the way to see what Congressional Democrats want is to look at the bills they introduced. And neither of those contained a trillion dollars in spending.
Sonic:
normal people in normal conversation have no problem with shorthand like rounding up to the nearest round-number X when something is like 85% of X.
They sure as fuck do not. If you tell me you’re going to give me a hundred dollars, and you give me eighty-five, I’ll be angry. If I said I had a hundred students and I had eighty-five, I’d be accused of exaggerating. At the very least, you need 90% of X.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
This debate about whether or not it’s acceptable to round $850 billion up to $1 trillion seems like nothing compared to whining about $45 million items in a “$1 trillion” bill. That’s less than 0.05% of $1 trillion! Steele is trying to use the fact that all words ending in -illion sound the same to mislead the public into thinking that a $45 million item is significant. In my book, that’s much worse than dubious-but-defensible rounding practices.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
“There are about a million things wrong with this argument”
I would just start with one of those then. Aside from the last paragraph, this was the nittiest of nitpicking of a common rhetorical device. Really Matt…
February 8th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Paulk
“Um, that’s not my conclusion, Sonic. That $44 million “not mattering” is a conclusion based upon Steele’s blithe dismissal of the difference between $850 billion and $1 trillion. ($150 billion)”
Ok, so what I hear you saying (and I’m not certain this was the point Matthew was trying to make, but) is that these two scales were not the same:
1. The amount by which Steel rounded up to a round number when characterizing the size of the spending bill in toto
2. The size of budget item he was willing to cite as an example of a wasteful item
What I can’t figure out is why you think these scales necessarily need to be the same.
Matt Weiner:
“They sure as fuck do not. If you tell me you’re going to give me a hundred dollars, and you give me eighty-five, I’ll be angry.”
Whoa! Calm down. I guess you would. But that’s not what Steele did. If you can’t tell the difference between (1) rhetorically characterizing something in round-number terms and (2) paying off the exact amount of a debt, I can’t help you further.
February 8th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I’m confused by this concept “absolute terms.” Can someone explain to me why $1 is closer to $150 billion than $850 billion is to $1 trillion? It seems to me that:
150 billion – 1 = 149,999,999,999 and
1 trillion – 850 billion = 150,000,000,000.
So someone please explain since you all seem to agree with him on that point.
February 8th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
mister jim-
nice catch.
February 8th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Huh?
mister jim which of those two 12-digit numbers do you think is smaller?
February 8th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Mister Jim, didn’t you just answer your own question?
February 8th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Matt W:
“If you want to pretend he’s making an assertion about what Congressional Democrats want in their heart of hearts, you can make up anything you want”
Um… doesn’t take a lot of “pretending.” It’s what he said.
But just to be clear, in judging the motivations of congressional democrats, the only measure for judgment is to read actually bills. No reading anything into that.
But in judging Michael Steele, we can disregard his actual words. even though he said, “What congressional deomocrats want,” he didn’t mean that. And he was not rounding. He was lying.
Ah well, someonme once said consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So feel free to set different standards for different people. And do make sure that in doing so, you are able to prove that people you don’t like are dishonest hacks. That way, you can feel better about yourself.
February 8th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Ok, so what I hear you saying (and I’m not certain this was the point Matthew was trying to make, but) is that these two scales were not the same:
1. The amount by which Steel rounded up to a round number when characterizing the size of the spending bill in toto
2. The size of budget item he was willing to cite as an example of a wasteful item
What I can’t figure out is why you think these scales necessarily need to be the same.
I am saying this. What you appear to be saying is that we should understand Steele’s words in these terms:
1) This bill is extremely expensive and wasteful.
2) Here is an example of how it is wasteful.
Viewed in this context, I can understand your insistence that this is both true and uncomplicated. If I accept this premise, the claim I can deduce from this would be something like, “Some aspects of this bill are wasteful.”
Were this the point or limit of the claims (or how Steele is choosing to use them), I don’t think we’d have any problem.
But my objection—and Matt’s as well, I think—is that this isn’t the deduction being made, nor is it the conclusion this kind of “normal” conversation will produce, which is why the objection is about rhetoric, not logic.
We could assume that Steele is only calling for specific waste to be eliminated from the bill. And House Republicans have identified about $900 million in “waste.” As I said, we could argue the relative merits of that.
But as I’ve said, evidence like this is a tiny part of the overall bill, which makes it a better argument in favor of the overall bill. If he wants to argue that this is representative, well, we’re all still waiting. (And, frankly, when they knocked $100 billion out of the bill, if they had that evidence, you’d think they could have taken out this stuff rather than the stuff that actually works as stimulus. Or if they couldn’t take that out, they’d maybe, you know, mention it, rather than the small stuff.)
The point of all this is simply that Steele is speaking to the press to make an argument against the bill itself. In so doing, he casually adds $150 billion to his estimate of the bill’s cost, then immediately launches into a specific discussion of unrepresentative portion of the bill to justify his claim about the size of the bill.
This is his line: “Democrats in Congress want a one-trillion dollar spending bill. You’ve heard about the pork-barrel programs they want to fund.” Logically, his “representative” example cannot, itself, prove that it is representative. Placing the size of the bill in direct sequence to a criticism of a portion of the bill certainly might not be intended to be taken as representative. If it isn’t, however, then Steele just doesn’t speak the language very well or understand anything about logical progression.
There’s a sense in which, you’re correct, Steele’s statement is simple and logically correct. But that requires that we have no concept of the reason for the debate, any other arguments being made, and take everything Steele says much more literally than we are doing here.
Unfortunately, he’s and his colleagues have done nothing to earn that kind of benefit of the doubt.
February 8th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“What you appear to be saying is that we should understand Steele’s words in these terms:
1) This bill is extremely expensive and wasteful.
2) Here is an example of how it is wasteful.”
Of course. Indeed, this is obvious. Indeed, any fair and charitable interpretation of Steele’s position and words (whether in agreement with them or not) would have tacitly acknowledged it as obvious from the start, and proceeded with some sort of other (real) argument from there.
“Viewed in this context, I can understand your insistence that this is both true and uncomplicated. [...but, here's a bunch of complicated stuff I want to say...] There’s a sense in which, you’re correct, Steele’s statement is simple and logically correct.”
‘K then. Bye,
February 8th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
“Viewed in this context, I can understand your insistence that this is both true and uncomplicated. […but, here’s a bunch of complicated stuff I want to say…] There’s a sense in which, you’re correct, Steele’s statement is simple and logically correct.”
‘K then. Bye,
I especially like the part where you ignore the entire argument about why that context bears no relationship to any part of what Steele, Matt, or I am saying.
The “nah nah nah I win” argument. Clever.
As for this:
1) This bill is extremely expensive and wasteful.
2) Here is an example of how it is wasteful.”
Of course. Indeed, this is obvious. Indeed, any fair and charitable interpretation of Steele’s position and words (whether in agreement with them or not) would have tacitly acknowledged it as obvious from the start, and proceeded with some sort of other (real) argument from there.
What an utterly bizarre definition of “Fair and charitable,” one that suggests that you must pretend that guy is an idiot and doesn’t know what he or anyone else is saying. But if you are really so unable to step back and look at the fundamental use of language, I’m sure you’ll be very happy to always feel that you’re correct.
Good luck with that.
February 8th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
The problem with Matt’s post is that he undermined a perfectly good point with an absurd comparison.
$45 million is a trivial number in a bill this size and most of the items that Republicans ultimately stripped from the bill are dominated by things like funding for police, education, health care, and science, which are hardly considered Bridges to Nowhere by the public.
But instead of arguing that point he’s got us arguing whether you can ever round up by $150 billion (you can) or whether the difference between $1 and $150 billion is the fundamentally the same as the difference between $850 billion and $1 trillion (it’s not).
I invite anyone who believes the second point to calculate the interest on an $850 billion dollar loan and decide if Matt could type his post fast enough for his point to still be true by the time he finished it.
February 8th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Sam M, it’s a consistent standard. When you judge what someone wants, you have to judge their public actions, or you can make up anything you want.
People should judge what congressional Democrats want by their public actions: the bills they’ve proposed.
People should judge Michael Steele by his public actions: his statements about the bills congressional Democrats have proposed. If you were to bother to read his remarks, you would see that he was unambiguously talking about the Democrats’ stimulus bill.
It’s really quite clear. And yes, judging you by your public statements, you’re a dishonest hack. I mean, come on, you deleted two critical words from a quote that’s at the top of this page. Does that strike you as honest?
February 8th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
8.5*10^11
Now can we round 8.5 to 10, since they are smaller numbers?
February 8th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
While focusing on the quantity, you might miss his argument that money somehow loses its value when spent by the government. Is the economic value of a family buying food and paying the rent with a government check different from a family doing the same with a check from the private sector? If the point is to get money moving, how are they different?
When a company gets a check for a government contract, does it pay less than a check of equal amount from a private business? If that company then writes a check to a private business out of an account filled with government money, is the value of that check diminished? Do the numbers suddenly have different meaning?
Money spent by the government does not disappear. Inflation is an issue, as is paying it back, but when it’s government money or nothing…
February 8th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
The whole spending is stimulus argument is bogus. The spending here is more like blowing your wad then stimulus. Yes you spend some money but it is short and quick and once it is gone there nothing left but the clean up.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Politicians lie. The bigger the stakes, the bigger the lies. And given the overwhelming evidence of lies and incompetence that have brought the Reps to the brink of permanent Minority Party status, the rhetorical fudging of their newly elected Chair isn’t “bad math” as much as it is the desperate groans of the guy slung over the peasant’s shoulder in Monty Python’s classic ‘Bring out your dead’ bit in “The Holy Grail.” Every point in Matthew’s piece hits a bulls-eye except the central premise: Steele and his fellow ‘pugs know with the private sector reeling in the ring like a drunk uncle and the voters scared of next month’s bad news, Big Gov’t is the only player left on the board — and red ink is the only toy it’s got to play with. Why else did the ‘pugs propose their own stimulus plan? But see, these desperate hypocrites only like Government and Deficits and Debt when they’re the ones running it up (or down, in the former), and while they’d never look a gift tax-cut in the mouth, getting a huge one courtesy of Pelosi and POTUS Obama makes them and their obstructionism even more irrelevant.
And for those who claim 15% isn’t a significant round-up, let’s turn it about: the Bush presidency added 4.3 trillion to our current 10 trillion Nat’l Debt — 43% of the total. “Under eight years of Republican mismanagement, we nearly doubled our National Debt.” Guess that’s a mathematically legit claim under ‘pug rules.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:49 am
What a joke. The CBO says this bill will end up costing nearly 1.3 trillion and you clowns are crying about 850 billion being called 1 trillion. Let’s call it what it will cost us after intrest. It will be well over a 1 trillion and the fact is they are already spending 700 billion on the tarp plus they say they will be looking for more so just actual numbers and no intrest you are 1.5 trillion and couting.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:32 am
I don’t think anything coming from Congress is “pure.”
Has it not been the custom of Democrats to refer to tax cuts as “cost”? Often have I heard the wail from the Left,
“How is President Bush going to pay for these tax cuts?”
(Mind, they usually leave off the honorific of “President”.)
Do Reid and Pelosi really think they can spend my money better than I can? What a bunch of maroons.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Matt, you have made this point before. I love your blog, but please consult applied mathematicians of your acquaintance, such as Andrew Gelman or Paul Krugman. I think you will find that they disagree with your point about absolute and proportional comparisons, especially in the domain of something like money where the magnitude of the unit is a matter of convention.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:29 am
8.5*10^11
Now can we round 8.5 to 10, since they are smaller numbers?
No, but you can round it to 10*10^11. Seriously, does everyone have the math background of George W. Bush these days? This isn’t controversial stuff.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Sorry, I misread that last comment. I thought you were trying to make soullite’s point.
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