MANCESSION: The Jobless Gender Gap: Unemployment for men is growing at a much faster pace than for women. “Imagine the outcry if women amounted to roughly three in four lost jobs in this recession.”The second link is to this article in the Weekly Standard, which offers no proof whatsoever of its claim. But proof was never relevant to a site like Instapundit: Which wants to believe, and so leaps at any circumstantial evidence, and then cites it as if it is proof.
This was not by accident, but a matter of Administration policy in response to interest-group pressure.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds at 9:33 pm.
Maybe the Weekly Standard article makes a good point. Or maybe t is complete horse malarkey. (Both appear routinely in the Weekly standard, with an edge to the latter.) The point is, there is really no way of knowing, since almost nothing is supported.
In Weekly Standard world: Proposal was for construction stimulus jobs. Women's groups protested. scant information regarding actual evidence or other considerations is actually provided in the article. But, what does that matter, since ultimate stimulus package did not emphasize construction jobs, this was then without a doubt a result of women groups protesting!
In Weekly Standard World, if you usually order a chocolate milkshake with your fries, but today you order a strawberry one and ask for a hurricane, and a hurricane comes, then ordering strawberry milkshakes causes hurricanes!
But one thing that the Weekly Standard article does assert that is determinable without additional evidence, one way or another, is the following claim by author Christina Hoff Sommers, so it is no shock that the article appears to be another case of manipulation. That claim -- keep in mind as you read it that the AEI is focused above all else on economics -- is this:
The whole idea of economic stimulus is to use government spending to put idle factors of production back to work.
No, it's not. And when it is, it's a bad idea. Or a bad expression of what economic stimulus -- good or bad idea iself -- is all about.
What it is all about is increasing aggregate demand in the economy, which has lagged below that of aggregate supply. That may have the effect of putting idle production back to work -- or, if that idle production has lagged due to competition, replacing it with more efficient competitors or alternatives. But the idea of stimulus is to stimulate demand and spur production and renew job growth, but not necessarily by simply propping up sectors or production capacities that are inefficient and thus have idle capacity. This AEI "economist" confuses the purpose of such policy, with a potential and often resultant effect.
That's lazy analysis, but one wouldn't expect Instapundit to rely upon anything less. As long as it throws a theory out there -- right or wrong, without backing it up -- that's against the Obama administration, that's good enough for Instapundit, your one stop shop for Insta BS.
