Stimulus Saves or Creates Jobs in fictional places!

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its like a bad sitcom

Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
Human Error Blamed for Crediting New Stimulus Jobs to Nonexistent Places
By JONATHAN KARL
Nov. 16, 2009—

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.

"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.

"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.

The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.

"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."

ABC News was able to locate several examples on the government's Web site outlining hundreds of millions of dollars spent and jobs created in Congressional districts that have been misidentified.

For example, recovery.gov says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent in Arizona's 86th congressional district in a project for the Navajo Housing authority, which is actually located in the 1st congressional district.

Click Here to Track the $787 Billion Stimulus Plan

The reporting problems are not limited to Arizona, ABC News found.

In Oklahoma, recovery.gov lists more than $19 million in spending -- and 15 jobs created -- in yet more congressional districts that don't exist.

In Iowa, it shows $10.6 million spent and 39 jobs created -- in nonexistent districts.

In Connecticut's 42nd district (which also does not exist), the Web site claims 25 jobs created with zero stimulus dollars.

The list of spending and job creation in fictional congressional districts extends to U.S. territories as well.

$68.3 million spent and 72.2 million spent in the 1st congressional district of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

$8.4 million spent and 40.3 jobs created in the 99th congressional district of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

$1.5 million spent and .3 jobs created in the 69th district and $35 million for 142 jobs in the 99th district of the Northern Mariana Islands.

$47.7 million spent and 291 jobs created in Puerto Rico's 99th congressional district.

Stimulus Fund Mystery
Interesting facts and figures, but none of these districts exist.

The recovery.gov Web site was established as part of the stimulus bill "to foster greater accountability and transparency" in the use of the money spent through the stimulus program. The site is a well-funded enterprise; the General Services Administration updated it earlier this year with an $18 million grant.

Hilarious. When I first saw the headline, I thought it would be about corruption or theft, but sometimes I guess the best you can hope for is human incompetence.

[Sea Skimmer]

Makes sense to spend fictional wealth in fictional places. Course this also means by the time any reliable auditing is completed all the real fraudsters will have had many extra months or even years to cover tracks. No way do you throw 787 billion dollars into the economy on short notice for quick projects and not have massive levels of theft.

[KrauserKrauser]

But, but, but, but, but this money was needed NOWRIGHTTHEFUCKNOWOMGTHESKYISFALLINGALLTHEJOBSWILLBESHOVELREADYOBAMAISTHEGREATEST!

Definitely no need for some careful planning and verification of all the projects, shit then you might actually get some actual improvements. Instead Obama can claim increased job levels by simply fabricating jobs in fabricated regions.

Big black mark on his and the Dem's reputation. Why exactly should I trust them again when they try to run hundreds of billions of dollars in one bill where there will obviously be know prior planning in where the money will be spent?

Dumbassery, plain old dumbassery. About what I expected would happen when you try to spend more than the New Deal in one go. Fucking idiots.

[J]

Here's another fun one on fictional jobs, pay raises count as saved jobs!

AP via google

STIMULUS WATCH: Salary raise counted as saved job

By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and MATT APUZZO – Nov 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The government's latest count of stimulus jobs significantly overstates the effects of the $787 billion program under a popular federal preschool program, raising fresh questions about the process the Obama administration is using to tout the success of its economic recovery plan.

An Associated Press review of the latest stimulus reports — which the White House promised would undergo extensive reviews to ensure accuracy — found that more than two-thirds of 14,506 jobs credited to the recovery act under spending by just one federal office were overstated because they counted pay increases for existing workers as jobs saved.

The inflated job count is at least partly the product of the administration instructing local community agencies that received money to count the raises as jobs saved.

"That's more than ridiculous," said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Most of the inflated figures were like those cited in the 935 saved jobs reported by the Southwest Georgia Community Action in Moultrie, Ga. The agency, like hundreds of others collecting Head Start money, claimed all its existing employees' jobs were saved because they received a pay raise with the stimulus cash.

Similar claims led to overstating by more than 9,300 the number of jobs saved with more than $323 million in stimulus money distributed by the Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the AP's review found.

More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, pay for training and continuing education, extend employee work hours or buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

The Georgia program inflated the numbers even further by claiming the recovery money saved more jobs than the number of people it actually employs. The agency employs 508 people but claimed 935 jobs were saved because of confusion over government reports.

That type of accounting error was found in an earlier AP review of stimulus jobs, which the Obama administration said was misleading because most of the government's job-counting mistakes were being fixed in the new data.

The AP's new review focused only on the money distributed by the Administration for Children and Families and was not an assessment of the money handled by dozens of other federal programs and other job claims made in the new stimulus report.

The administration acknowledged overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data "to determine how and if it will be counted."

But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

The raises themselves were appropriate since the stimulus law set aside money for Head Start salary increases, but converting that number into jobs saved proved difficult. The Obama administration told Head Start officials to consider a fraction of each employee as a job saved.

Many Head Start programs around the country went further, counting everyone who received a raise as a saved job.

"It's a glitch in the system," said Ben Allen, the research director at the National Head Start Association. "There was some misunderstanding among some in the Head Start community about completing the reporting requirements."

Allen said a cost-of-living adjustment "may not be viewed traditionally as a job saved, but one could interpret it that, by providing COLA, you're retaining staff."

The Bergen County Community Action Program in Hackensack, N.J., noted the nearly $213,000 it received went to cover raises for existing staff only. But it also reported saving 85 jobs.

At Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, director Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula said she followed the guidelines the Obama administration provided. She said she multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and came up with 935 jobs saved.

"I would say it's confusing at best," she said. "But we followed the instructions we were given."

Ed DeSeve, who oversees the stimulus at the White House, said the Head Start numbers "represent a few percent of all jobs reported" and said the problems would probably be balanced out by other errors that underreported jobs.

"We don't expect any corrections to this data to meaningfully impact the total 640,000 direct jobs," DeSeve said.

Last week's stimulus report claimed 640,000 jobs saved or created by the economic recovery plan so far. Those jobs came from 156,614 federal contracts, grants and loans awarded to more than 62,000 recipients, worth a total of $215 billion.

Obama has promised the stimulus would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year, and the data released Friday represented the first head count toward that goal.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I think I've finally figured out how the BLS was adding jobs in the financial industry earlier this year when the banks were doing mass layoffs, all those bonuses & pay raises are being counted as saved jobs.

[KrauserKrauser]

The amount of egg on the Dems and Obama's face for this is quite amazing. It's going to be pretty hard to convince anyone that they can actually handle these large amounts of money with this shit going on.

They deserve to be raked over the coals for this one, it's simply retarded and all of their opponents aren't going to let this go. Expect to hear this non-stop come the 2010 elections.

[Edi]

The amount of egg on the Dems and Obama's face for this is quite amazing. It's going to be pretty hard to convince anyone that they can actually handle these large amounts of money with this shit going on.

They deserve to be raked over the coals for this one, it's simply retarded and all of their opponents aren't going to let this go. Expect to hear this non-stop come the 2010 elections.

Most of this shit was flogged equally by the Republicans, as was the money given to the financial institutions. It's not just one side or the other with egg on its face, it's the entire Washington DC establishment.

[Andrew J.]

Last night on The Daily Show Biden said this was caused by "poor civics lessons" and that people just don't know what Congressional district they live in. As far as they can tell, the actual programs and jobs actually exist. I see no reason why the Democrats should have any "egg on their face," much less an amazing amount, over this.

[Vendetta]

Just how rotten are the boroughs over there?

[KrauserKrauser]

Giving the article a more thorough read through there is not necessarily any proof of impropriety with the distribution of the money. The money may or may not have actually been spent correctly they are just reporting the raw data they have received directly from the recipients.

Bah, may not be the OMG disaster that I harped on earlier, though J's post is fairly hilarious and much more damning. That BS the HHS secretary is spewing just makes no sense. Far more indicative of shady practices on the part of Obama. So much for accurate reporting and increased transparency in government, at least when it comes to the economy.

[SirNitram]

To juxtapose the mayhem that came from recordkeeping, a NYT article.

Link

The one highly visible success of the stimulus program has been the cash-for-clunkers program. It induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise.

The rest of the stimulus has created a lot of jobs — 700,000 to 1.5 million, according to economists’ estimates. But it has done so in thousands of little ways: scattered construction projects, plugged-up school budgets and the like. Politically, these measures are not popular enough to create a groundswell for more of them.

And the economy still needs help. So White House officials are looking at creating a new version of cash for clunkers — this time for home weatherization.

John Doerr, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and former President Bill Clinton have separately suggested versions of the idea to the White House. Mr. Doerr calls his proposal, which would give households money to pay for weatherization projects, “cash for caulkers.” Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, told me, “It’s one of the top things he’s looking at.”

The idea has a lot to recommend it. The housing bust has idled contractors and construction workers, who could be put to work insulating homes and caulking air leaks. Many households, meanwhile, would save substantial money — not to mention help the climate — by weatherizing their homes, research by McKinsey & Company has shown. All in all, a cash-for-caulkers program seems like a promising part of the jobs program for 2010 that Mr. Obama has suggested he is planning.

But I would also mention one point of caution: the details of any caulkers plan will matter enormously. Weatherizing a home, as I recently discovered, turns out to be a lot more complicated than buying a car.

This year, my wife and I had an energy audit done on our home. We were interested in finding out if we could save money and, given the attention that weatherizing was starting to get, I figured it could also make for good column fodder. For $400, an auditor spent hours scouring our house, with the help of a big fan he set up in our front door and an infrared camera. He produced a full-color, 13-page detailed report, informing us of the leaks in our house, and he was also willing to tell us which changes were usually a waste of money (new windows).

Even so, we are still trying to figure out which weatherization projects we should do. The whole package would probably cost $4,500 and save us something like $400 a year. We may not stay in the house nearly long enough to justify the investment.

Such concerns are typical. How do you find an auditor? How do you know whether you should seal a few ducts or pay $2,000 for new insulation? Which of the existing subsidies — state and federal — might you qualify for?

Mr. Doerr and Mr. Clinton are well aware of these problems. Mr. Clinton has sent the White House a memorandum written by his foundation staff that lays out the reasons people don’t weatherize their homes. Mr. Doerr, who sits on a board of outside economic advisers to Mr. Obama that is working on a formal cash-for-caulkers proposal, told me that his goal was to “keep it really simple so we can do it really fast.”

The Doerr plan would cost $23 billion over two years. Most of the money would go for incentive payments, generally $2,000 to $4,000, for weatherization projects. The homeowner would always have to pay at least 50 percent of the project’s total cost. About $3 billion would be set aside for retailers and contractors in the hope that they would promote the program, much as car dealerships promoted cash for clunkers. (Mr. Doerr says he owns no stake in any weatherization companies.)

The Clinton plan depends on the reallocation of clean energy money from the stimulus bill that has not yet been spent. It covers not just houses and apartments but also commercial and industrial buildings.

Perhaps most intriguing is its proposal to help homeowners and building owners who are nervous they will end up selling their property before a weatherization project has paid for itself. Under the Clinton plan, they could add the project’s cost to their long-term property tax bill, effectively splitting the cost with the next owner. The New York State Legislature approved such a program on Monday.

All these efforts would lead to more weatherization. But I would be surprised if they were enough to create a program as successful as cash for clunkers. Remember: Many homeowners could already save money by weatherizing their homes. And they are not doing so.

That’s in large part because the projects can seem so daunting. To date, energy experts, in the government and the private sector, have not done a good job of distributing useful information. What does exist tends to be either too complicated or too general. I recently asked various experts what percentage of homes should get new insulation, for example, and several replied that it varied by region — which is both true and unhelpful.

Imagine, though, if the Energy Department put together a weatherization-for-dummies fact sheet and Mr. Obama began promoting it.

It could start by noting that almost all homes should have a programmable thermostat (about $100) to turn down the heat or the air-conditioning when nobody is home. Other simple steps can include wrapping a water heater with an insulation blanket and replacing heating and cooling filters. Next on the list would be sealing easily accessible holes in air ducts, which can cost just a few hundred dollars and pay for itself in a few years. In California, the average duct system loses 30 percent of its heating or cooling to leaks.

Finally would come the more complicated categories, including insulation and heating equipment. Yet some basic information could still help enormously here. What share, say, of Midwestern homes built before 1950 could use more attic insulation? How quickly would the insulation pay for itself on average? Every home is different, obviously. But without any reference point, many people won’t be confident enough to plunge into a project.

The shining example that Mr. Clinton cites is a Houston program in which the local government pays about $1,000 to weatherize any home in a given neighborhood. It works in part because the houses need similar improvements, which makes the program easy for residents to understand.

“Unlike traditional programs that provide an audit and a customized package of solutions for each home,” the Clinton memorandum notes, Houston “offers a fixed set of interventions that include climate-appropriate ‘low hanging fruit.’ ”

The bottom line is that cash for caulkers would be trickier than cash for clunkers — yet would have the potential to do far more good. McKinsey, the consulting firm, estimates that households could reduce their energy use by 28 percent over the next decade. In terms of greenhouse gases, that would be the equivalent of taking half of all vehicles in this country off the road.

And unlike many other climate-friendly policies, it would not cost money over the long term. Done right, cash for caulkers would be precisely the kind of stimulus that makes the most sense: spending money now to save money later.

Bolding mine. The problem is I think this is the best it can do. The bill was too small, frankly. What would work best, I think, is a true Jobs bill. FDR style.

[Vehrec]

To juxtapose the mayhem that came from recordkeeping, a NYT article.

Bolding mine. The problem is I think this is the best it can do. The bill was too small, frankly. What would work best, I think, is a true Jobs bill. FDR style.

Hmmm. It has been some time since the original Historical Records Survey, the American Guides are in need of a new edition, and I'm betting that with the health care industry in its current state they could use some more art to brighten up the place. This could be a useful opportunity.

[KrauserKrauser]

And Nitram how many of those are actual jobs and not just pay raises falsely recorded as saved and/or new jobs?

The amount of money is actually MORE than the ENTIRE New Deal legislation in 2009 dollars and has as of yet produced jack all in concrete gains. Smoke and mirrors and money moving to Wall Street is all I see, I don't see a new TVA or Hoover Damn being built.

Maybe some money could have been sent to the re-adoption of Nuclear to go along with the future of plug in hybrids just like Obama promised on the campaign trail, oh wait.... Nope we'll go with China dependent rare earth metal power generation instead of Nuclear so instead of being dependent on the Saudis, we'll switch over to China determining our energy future. Genius!

[FireNexus]

Maybe some money could have been sent to the re-adoption of Nuclear to go along with the future of plug in hybrids just like Obama promised on the campaign trail, oh wait.... Nope we'll go with China dependent rare earth metal power generation instead of Nuclear so instead of being dependent on the Saudis, we'll switch over to China determining our energy future. Genius!

Please show your sources re: Obama's nuclear energy promises on the campaign trail. I don't recall him making any such promises, and I'd have been shocked if he had, given that a big chunk of his base is a bunch of antinuclear cheerleaders.

[J]

The endless cheerleading is making me sick. Just report the goddamn truth.

The one highly visible success of the stimulus program has been the cash-for-clunkers program. It induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise.

And it did so by "pulling forward" demand from future months, sales cratered again once the program expired.

The rest of the stimulus has created a lot of jobs — 700,000 to 1.5 million, according to economists’ estimates.

I don't know where they get these numbers from when we have this:

Financial Times
Exerpt:

The US economic stimulus programme has directly created or saved 640,000 jobs so far, the White House said yesterday as it battled to find ways to show that its $787bn package was working in spite of persistently high unemployment.

CNN Money
Excerpt:

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- The largest stimulus program in the nation's history has created or saved just over 640,000 jobs, the Obama administration said Friday

WSJ
Excerpt:

WASHINGTON -- About 640,000 jobs have been created or saved by the $787 billion stimulus package, the White House said Friday, an estimate that didn't satisfy Republicans or ease worries about rising U.S. unemployment.

Do I need to continue or can we agree that those unnamed economists are completely full of dog squeeze?

Start enforcing the laws. Start prosecuting. Nothing will be fixed in the long term as long as the US is viewed as a banana republic.

[KrauserKrauser]

Well hatfuckers, foiled again.

I've found a multitude of sources where he stated that he was not outright opposed to nuclear power but nowhere can I find campaign promises for money to be spent in expanding nuclear power.

I'll retract that but retain my objection to his choice of energy policies.

Wish I could be one of those 640,000 new job winners, they should be receiving over a million dollars a piece!

[SirNitram]

And Nitram how many of those are actual jobs and not just pay raises falsely recorded as saved and/or new jobs?

Let's see. The above is where I get the number, but it's not from the Recovery Board, but from economists, who have no horse in this race.(If anything, Keyesnians would under-state, as they echo Krugman: THe Stimulus Was Too Small.)

Brooking's discusses it in depth: Link

To shorten it, the Administration used a sample of 150,000 reports by those receiving grants. As we've seen, those reports did have human error, but these weren't reports saying 'We raised ten guys jobs'. For a small scale example, from the WSJ(No friend of Obama's policies):

A Kentucky shoe-store owner claimed to have created or saved nine jobs with an $889.60 contract to supply work boots to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Every little bit helps. As the WSJ reported, dozens of reports showed saving or creating at least one job with less than 2,000$ from the stimulus.

HeadStart's reports had 277 of the mistakes Sebelius made, but 277 out of 150,000 is 0.001% from the total bill.

WSJ Stuff

Out of this, the WSJ thinks the number from Obama is overstated by as much as 20,000. I would not find this wholly uncredible. They are using a form of statistics, and this produces margins of error. Assuming they used a standard method, or hired someone to, we would be looking at between a 3% and 5% margin of error with 95% certainty. 20,000 would be 2% off. So I regard it as quite possible.

[Darksider]

Quick question about the stimulus bill. How much of the money is being spent towards legitimate projects, and how much was wasted on useless tax cuts and other shit the republicans pushed for? IIRC there was quite a bit of grumbling on the forum when the stimulus passed about how it was a "watered down" version of what the president actually wanted because he made numerous concessions to the republicans so they wouldn't give him any shit over it (which they proceeded to do anyways, I'm shocked ). Would the initial form of the bill have been any more effective than the current one?

[Surlethe]

"Created or saved 640,000 jobs" is not the same as "created 700,000 - 1.5 million jobs". The first one is pretty obviously an estimate of the net effect of the stimulus: according to the Obama administration's macroeconomic models, the economy is about 640,000 jobs less fucked than it would have been otherwise. The second number is presumably easier to measure: how many jobs the stimulus directly created via increased spending. The two numbers are not measuring the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

Couple more points. First, if - as Nit suggests - the administration actually gathered statistical evidence of how many jobs were "created or saved", that counts as empirical evidence for models that IIRC predicted about 600k jobs being "created or saved". I'd be not so trusting, though, of people's judgment on whether a job was saved based on increased spending - is X so sure he'd cut job Y if he had fewer funds, or would he have made things stretch? etc. Second, Nit raises a good point: often, a little bit of money will help push a job back up to marginal profitability. You don't have to give a company $30,000 to hire a new person, you just have to give them the extra $500 it takes to make them not need to fire the guy whom they were paying $30,000 but who was only bringing in $26,000.

[CmdrWilkens]

Real quick off the cuff numbers but recall of the $787B total cost just about $300B was in tax cuts or one form or another. So when the numbers come out its in part a reflection of the fact that: Tax Cuts suck at saving or creating jobs and The actual SPENDING in the bill was only at about 2/3rds of the toal cost.

I'll echo Biden's point from TDS which is that based on Zip Code the jobs claimed do exist its only because the survey results had coding errors on the Congressional District level that you get ridiculous things like the Arizona 15th (though he did have a good joke about "Can you imagine that many more Republicans?")

[J]

Quick question about the stimulus bill. How much of the money is being spent towards legitimate projects, and how much was wasted on useless tax cuts and other shit the republicans pushed for? IIRC there was quite a bit of grumbling on the forum when the stimulus passed about how it was a "watered down" version of what the president actually wanted because he made numerous concessions to the republicans so they wouldn't give him any shit over it (which they proceeded to do anyways, I'm shocked ). Would the initial form of the bill have been any more effective than the current one?

There's around $200 billion being spent on research, infrastructure, and energy projects, the rest is tax breaks, funding for unemployment & foodstamps, bailouts for the housing industry, healthcare & education funding, and a bunch of odds & ends. The original version wasn't much better as I recall; it had fewer tax cuts but there wasn't much more spending in energy, research, and infrastructure so the end result would be much the same in the medium to long term. I believe the original had more funding for UI, medicaid & other social services but I'd have to track down the drafts to be sure.

[TheKwas]

And Nitram how many of those are actual jobs and not just pay raises falsely recorded as saved and/or new jobs?

The amount of money is actually MORE than the ENTIRE New Deal legislation in 2009 dollars and has as of yet produced jack all in concrete gains.

Exactly how is this relevant (so relevant that you feel the need to mention it twice in one thread)? You do realize that america has grown by leaps and bounds since the New Deal? I don't know the population of America in the 30s off the top of my head, but I assure you it's a fraction of 300 million

[Justyn]

And Nitram how many of those are actual jobs and not just pay raises falsely recorded as saved and/or new jobs?

The amount of money is actually MORE than the ENTIRE New Deal legislation in 2009 dollars and has as of yet produced jack all in concrete gains.

Exactly how is this relevant (so relevant that you feel the need to mention it twice in one thread)? You do realize that america has grown by leaps and bounds since the New Deal? I don't know the population of America in the 30s off the top of my head, but I assure you it's a fraction of 300 million

About 30-40 percent or so: Google says that the current population is a little over 304,000,000 (apparently they got it from the Census Bureau.); Wikipedia says that the population was 122,775,046 in 1930 (they got that number from the Census Bureau as well).

[Soontir C'boath]

And Nitram how many of those are actual jobs and not just pay raises falsely recorded as saved and/or new jobs?

The amount of money is actually MORE than the ENTIRE New Deal legislation in 2009 dollars and has as of yet produced jack all in concrete gains.

Exactly how is this relevant (so relevant that you feel the need to mention it twice in one thread)? You do realize that america has grown by leaps and bounds since the New Deal? I don't know the population of America in the 30s off the top of my head, but I assure you it's a fraction of 300 million

About 30-40 percent or so: Google says that the current population is a little over 304,000,000 (apparently they got it from the Census Bureau.); Wikipedia says that the population was 122,775,046 in 1930 (they got that number from the Census Bureau as well).

Or you can find the information directly from the Census Burea PDF: Fourth page in which the number 122,775,046 is correct. The 304,000,000 number is most likely the amount of punch cards that were used to collect the information.

[Justyn]

Exactly how is this relevant (so relevant that you feel the need to mention it twice in one thread)? You do realize that america has grown by leaps and bounds since the New Deal? I don't know the population of America in the 30s off the top of my head, but I assure you it's a fraction of 300 million

About 30-40 percent or so: Google says that the current population is a little over 304,000,000 (apparently they got it from the Census Bureau.); Wikipedia says that the population was 122,775,046 in 1930 (they got that number from the Census Bureau as well).

Or you can find the information directly from the Census Burea PDF: Fourth page in which the number 122,775,046 is correct. The 304,000,000 number is most likely the amount of punch cards that were used to collect the information.

No, it's the number that I rounded the actual number down to. Google took the number directly from the Census Bureau's estimates. It's 304,059,724 in case you don't want to download a bunch of things to look at those files.

See what happens when you assume?

[Soontir C'boath]

About 30-40 percent or so: Google says that the current population is a little over 304,000,000 (apparently they got it from the Census Bureau.); Wikipedia says that the population was 122,775,046 in 1930 (they got that number from the Census Bureau as well).

Or you can find the information directly from the Census Burea PDF: Fourth page in which the number 122,775,046 is correct. The 304,000,000 number is most likely the amount of punch cards that were used to collect the information.

No, it's the number that I rounded the actual number down to. Google took the number directly from the Census Bureau's estimates. It's 304,059,724 in case you don't want to download a bunch of things to look at those files.

See what happens when you assume?

You mean that my mind had a brainfart and didn't read the word "current" in your first sentence, right? By the way, you make it out as if assumptions are bad things to do but that's only if done incorrectly, obviously.

The point I was trying to bring out was that instead saying "I got this from wiki and it has source links of it", just link to the original source.
[/tangent]