Archive for category Numbers Lie
Numbers Lie: Denial of Claims
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on October 7th, 2009
The President said this about a month ago:
More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won’t pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.
Who, though, is the largest denier of medical claims in America?
I’m just sayin’.
Numbers Lie/You’re Effing Kidding Me, NYT Ed.
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie, You're effing kidding me on August 30th, 2009
I saw this editorial in the New York Times today.
Those who fear that a trillion-dollar reform will add to the nation’s deficit burden should remember that these changes are intended to be deficit-neutral over the next decade.
Before why I explain why “deficit-neutral over the next decade” doesn’t actually mean that much, I want to say that I am extremely disappointed in the Times for publishing this extremely shoddy editorial. It’s ridiculously pathetic. I want to focus on that one sentence for this post — click for more. Read the rest of this entry »
Numbers Lie: Bill O’Reilly is an Idiot
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on August 11th, 2009
Hat tip to… Paul Krugman, actually.
Numbers Lie, #I-Lost-Count-Already: Health Care (again)
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on July 7th, 2009
After the public uproar over a health insurance plan that was going to cost as $1 trillion (or $2 trillion or $4 trillion, but who’s counting?), the Democrats have put forth a new bill that claims to cost “only” $600 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Don’t let the lower numbers fool you. What the government has done here is not lowered the costs, but shifted the costs. To poor people, actually. How did they do it?
Numbers Lie, Health Care Edition: $4 Trillion
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on June 24th, 2009
Hat tip to John Goodman: The Kennedy Bill, if it covers all Americans, will cost about $4 Trillion.
Steve Parente and colleagues at Health Systems Innovations have scored the entire bill and come up with a ten-year cost of $4 trillion, including $460 billion in new spending in 2010 alone. This estimate assumes the mandates and coverage expansions will actually work and 99% of the population will be covered.
Numbers Lie, Part 5: Splitting a Penny
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on June 7th, 2009
I’VE talked before about how Obama’s proposal to cut the budget was disingenuous at best.
Hat tip to Young Americans for Liberty at UW for this gem.
The creator of the video, 10000 pennies, also put up this very creative critique of the stimulus:
Great videos! Subscribe to him on Youtube. I did.
EDIT: His blog is Political Math. He’s on my blogroll.
Numbers Lie, Part 3: Global Warming and Postage
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on May 5th, 2009
GLOBAL warming is driven by stam price increases.
Credit to GoNova.
Barbara Boxer, majority Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, immediately set up an inquiry, announcing that all future changes in price for US post must be approved by the EPA. “We’ll need a full environmental impact statement. We can’t just let global damage be done willy nilly on the basis of some arbitrary postal expenses committee’s need to balance the books. No other government service has to balance their budget, why should US Post?”
President Obama immediately convened a task force at the Federal Reserve to loan $450 billion to US Post to keep prices constant until 3400 A.D..
Numbers Lie, Part 2: Taxpayers to Get Rude Surprise
Posted by The Marginalist in Numbers Lie on May 3rd, 2009
LOOKS like someone messed up. From Yahoo News:
Millions of Americans enjoying their small windfall from President Barack Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit are in for an unpleasant surprise next spring.
The government is going to want some of that money back.
…
The Internal Revenue Service acknowledges problems with the withholding tables but has done little to warn average taxpayers.
Actually, I couldn’t help but think of this video:
– The Marginalist
The Numbers Lie, Part 1: $100 Million in Budget Cuts
Posted by The Marginalist in Links, Numbers Lie on April 20th, 2009
I’m starting a new series. It won’t be regular, but whenever I find some statistic that is outlandishly misused, I’ll put it up.
FROM the New York Times: $100 Million in Budget Cuts Seems Small to Some. Greg Mankiw has more here.
“He enacts a $1 trillion stimulus and then calls for $100 million in cuts?’’ said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It comes to one forty-thousandth of the federal budget for this year. The only parallel I can think of is that it’s like ordering a 5,000 calorie meal and then asking for a Diet Coke.’’
To be fair, Republicans are to blame for much of the growth of the size of government over the last decade. But I’m not a Republican, and if John McCain announced that he wanted to cut $100 million from a $3.5 trillion budget, I’d be disappointed in him as well.
The lesson here is not to think about the numbers so much as the percents. In a world of trillion dollar governments, $100 million seems like a lot (and it is), but to say that cutting $100 million over ninety days (or about $11 million a day, less than 0.0004% of the budget) is doing anything significant to solve our budget deficits is wishful thinking at best, and purposely deceitful at worse.
– The Marginalist