In political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event, organization or person in which there is no formally declared association with a political party affiliation.
Not partisan; free from party affiliation, bias, or designation.
en.wikipedia.org
..a true non-partisan is just what the term says.......
Yes and what the term says is that someone is not affiliated with pr connected to a political party.
to state that the CBO used incorrect assumptions that you wouldn't use is the height of pretense
No it would not be. It would also not be what I was saying (although I'll say it now, their assumptions are indeed incorrect on this). What I said was that their conclusion automatically derives from their assumption, that they haven't actually done anything to so that the assumption is correct. The CBO is something of an authority on budget calculations (not a good one in terms of future budgets but then no one is good at that, they do ok), they are not a general economic authority. It is not an authority (actually no one is) about whether Keynesian economics or Austrian theories, or monetarism or something else most accurately represents the response of the economy to stimulus effects either in general or in the current situation, or even given a specific theory, it can't really know precisely how it applies. So when all you have on this issue is that the CBO agrees with you, and you try to present that as even close to conclusive, your not only making a weak type of argument (arguments from a authority, x says y so we should believe y, are weak, even when the authority is a valid one), but a logical fallacy (argument from a false or invalid authority).
and therefore can't assume you can correct their algorithm.
I would assume the algorithm is perfect, they are good at that sort of thing, it will accurately and consistently produce an output that is mathematically correct given the assumptions they make. The problem is that there isn't any particular reason to think the assumptions are valid or that the output of their study has any correlation with reality.
An argument or a calculation that assumes its conclusion is worthless.
So leaving that aside we have the CBO's opinion. I wouldn't say such an opinion is totally worthless, but without something to support it (and assuming a multiplier of greater than one and then using that assumption to show spending the money helped, doesn't amount to support), its just one opinion among many, and not in any way authoritative. The CBO's estimates are probably as accurate as we are likely to get if you happen to agree with all of the assumptions they make, but the assumptions they make are the heart of the controversy, and they don't in any way prove those assumptions they just accept them.
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CBO Report Was Pre-Ordained to Show the Stimulus Succeeded
February 24, 2010 3:21 P.M.
By Brian Riedl
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has produced a new report estimating that the $862 billion stimulus has thus far saved or created 1.5 million jobs. Yet the CBO’s calculations are not based on actually observing the economy’s recent performance. Rather, they used an economic model that was programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs — thus guaranteeing their result.
Logicians call this the begging-the-question fallacy. Mathematicians call it assuming what you are trying to prove.
The CBO model started by automatically assuming that government spending increases GDP by pre-set multipliers, such as:
Every $1 of government spending that directly purchases goods and services ultimately raises the GDP by $1.75;
Every $1 of government spending sent to state and local governments for infrastructure ultimately raises GDP by $1.75;
Every $1 of government spending sent to state and local governments for non-infrastructure spending ultimately raises GDP by $1.25; and
Every $1 of government spending sent to an individual as a transfer payment ultimately raises GDP by $1.45.
(Note that all CBO figures in this post represent the midpoint between their high and low estimates.)
Then CBO plugged the stimulus provisions into the multipliers above, came up with a total increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.6 percent, and then converted that added GDP into 1.5 million jobs.
The problem here is obvious. Once CBO decided to assume that every dollar of government spending increased GDP by the multipliers above, its conclusion that the stimulus saved jobs was pre-ordained. The economy could have lost 10 million jobs and the model still would have said that without the stimulus it would have lost 11.5 million jobs.
The debate over the efficacy of Keynesian stimulus is essentially a debate over the correct multipliers. Some believe the multipliers are high, others believe they are as low as zero (or even negative). Testing the stimulus requires testing the multipliers. Yet by simply assuming large multipliers, CBO effectively pre-ordained its conclusion that the stimulus worked, regardless of what actually happened in the economy.
nationalreview.com
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