|
DarkSteven -> A rant about deliberately fuzzy math. (1/8/2011 5:15:48 PM)
|
Let's hypothesize that I come up with a bill that will cost $5 billion and provide well defined benefits. You'd expect a bunch of fiscal conservatives to decry the $5 bil price tag, and a bunch of others to talk up the benefits of the bill. Fair enough.
Now, let's say that I instead come up with a bill that requires forty PhDs to slog through and analyze, and that they all would disagree. What would the the consequences?
The fiscal conservatives would claim that I have created a bill that would single handedly quadruple the national debt and that it would provide minimal benefits at best. The proponents would likewise claim minimal impact on the debt and billions of golden benefits.
This is what we're seeing. Bills that are poorly defined. That allows talking heads to exaggerate their claims.
We are seeing fuzzier bills, greatly expanded spin machines, spinmeisters becoming more powerful than the people who actually get work DONE, and an increasingly angrier public. The public feels - rightly - more manipulated and that the truth is becoming less and less relevant.
I just needed to get that off my chest. I'm an engineer, and accuracy and ethics are paramount. This brave new world, in which things are kept as murky and ill-defined as possible, is not to my liking.
|
|
|
|
