I’m pleased to announce that as of today, April 1, I’ll be joining the Obama Adminstration’s economic team. My first assignment is to produce an estimate of the number of lives saved or created by the Libya operation.
(A hat tip for the inspiration to my colleague Mark Bils, who really should have his own blog.)
Whats the date again?
Abracadabra and CGE modelling have yielded an estimate of 10,000+
OK. So do I get a share of your payout from Obama?
But seriously, this was an absolutely necessary intervention. See my blog post: http://sabhlokcity.com/2011/03/india-should-bomb-the-hell-out-of-gaddafis-armed-forces/
Scott Adams has some useful advice for this kind of situation : http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-20/
Well war has a well-known effeect on birth rates so right there you have plenty of lives created.
An April Fool’s joke really should have at least an atom’s worth of plausibility at first glance :)
Good April fools.
Funny. Except is it clear that it won’t actually save lives? I have little use for the current administration but I do find it a bit flippant to airily dismiss attempts to stop Qaddafi from killing his people. Steve posted once about the lives saved by capital punishment. If an opponent of captial punishment said “I’m counting lives saved or created by firing squads …” would it be clear he has it right?
I’m curious to see what kind of stimulus package you’ll come up with.
i fell for it….
a whole 10 seconds…
Perhaps his second assignment will be to produce an estimate of the number of lives saved or created by US intervention in WWII. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that swift capitulation to the Nazis would have resulted in fewer lives lost in armed conflict, whereas US intervention prolonged the war and increased the number of lives lost to armed conflict.
Moreover, if I learned that, I don’t know what conclusion I’d draw from it. But doubtless Landsburg will tell us.