Moving the Goal Posts
I feel it necessary that we expose something that politicians and presidents do on a regular basis. Something that is proverbially known as, "moving the goal posts." That is to say, redefining victory.
While Obama has not done this yet, he has availed himself the opportunity to do so in regards to the stimulus package. Specifically, his claim of success revolves around "saving or producing 4 million jobs." That metric, while sounding specific, has significant wiggle room as to what "saving a job" pertains.
The way a "job saved" metric works is if every month a company reported that a job was saved, which they do not do. But that still leaves me questioning how a job is saved, and more importantly, how the saving of it could be tied specifically to government spending.
The only way for a "job saved" metric to come out would be if managers made reports and were honest in the making of those reports to the effect of stating, "If such-and-such government project did not come in, we would have fired X amount of employees."
I don't see that happening.
While Obama has not done this yet, he has availed himself the opportunity to do so in regards to the stimulus package. Specifically, his claim of success revolves around "saving or producing 4 million jobs." That metric, while sounding specific, has significant wiggle room as to what "saving a job" pertains.
The way a "job saved" metric works is if every month a company reported that a job was saved, which they do not do. But that still leaves me questioning how a job is saved, and more importantly, how the saving of it could be tied specifically to government spending.
The only way for a "job saved" metric to come out would be if managers made reports and were honest in the making of those reports to the effect of stating, "If such-and-such government project did not come in, we would have fired X amount of employees."
I don't see that happening.
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