David McElroy

The Obama administration has claimed that “stimulus” spending created or saved 300,000 to 400,000 jobs each quarter while its money was being doled out. Does anybody seriously believe that number? I don’t.

I was already a skeptic — to put it most politely — of such self-serving econometrics, but two things this week have made me even more skeptical.

First, a source who can’t be identified provided me with copies of documents that his company was required to fill out as a vendor on a contract that it was awarded by a school district. It was made clear to the company that it was expected to report that jobs created and saved, so that’s exactly what the report back to the district showed. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 workers had jobs only because of this project, according to the paperwork reported back to the federal government. In truth, nobody was hired just for the project. Nobody would have been fired if the project hadn’t come along.

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I’m sitting in a restaurant listening to a financial genius explain how to fix the economy. There’s a guy near me who says the government simply has to give $1 million to everybody 55 or older — on the condition that the person buy a car and a house. Voila. Economy fixed.

Where do you start with people who know this little, but are certain they know everything — and who believe they’re qualified and morally justified in trying to force their insane ideas on other people?

I think about this question a lot whenever I start thinking of our majoritarian political system. When people say they believe so adamantly in democracy, what I think they’re really saying is that they believe they’re right — and that if people would simply listen to them, all problems would be solved. What’s more, I find that most people honestly believe that the majority really believe the same basic things they believe. I can’t figure out the cause of this delusioin.

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According to a first-time commenter on the site named Terry, I’m apparently part of the “main stream (CFR influenced) Liberal media.” Those who regularly read the site probably find that just as amusing as I do, but I’m not mentioning it just to entertain us all. I’m mentioning it because of the sad point that Terry illustrates.

It seems as though it’s human nature to see the world in terms of “us vs. them.” There are many different positions that we can take — on political issues and most other things — but most people narrow it down to “what I believe” vs. “what the wrong people believe.” It’s just that the ways in which they segment the world are radically different. So even though most people see the world as “us vs. them,” they define “us” and “them” in very different ways.

Terry’s comment about me is a perfect example. He’s a Ron Paul supporter, and he took exception to my comments last week that straw polls are meaningless. It apparently would make  his head explode to realize that there are more positions other than “Ron Paul is going to win and straw polls matter” vs. “the mainstream liberal media who are in lockstep with the Council on Foreign Relations.” It doesn’t seem to occur to the guy that someone could be in favor of liberty enough to reject the statist system he supports — and is actually much further away from the mainstream than he could dream of being.

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