$1.80, give or take a buck

The other morning, I heard it mentioned (again, not for the first time) that for each dollar given in unemployment benefits, there is an economic boost of $1.80, due to some enigmatic multiplier.  I've always figured that some numerical shenanigans similar to the Missing Dollar puzzle were involved in this claim, but I am not an economist. However I've purchased a burger or two, so I can at least talk about that.

(Let me say in advance that none of this is intended as an editorial of the merits of such government programs; any opinion of how much or in what manner the government should provide for those that don't provide for themselves is irrelevant.)

For the sake of argument, let's say that a dollar that Bill earns and would otherwise receive is instead given to Ted. The hypothesis says that when Ted spends that dollar at BurgerWorld, the economy sees growth of $1.80. Here's my question: Would this dollar also grow the economy by $1.80 if Bill went to BurgerWorld?

If so, then there is no net difference, is there? The economic growth created by Bill's burger is now created by Ted's burger, but the result is the same; tranferring the dollar didn't create anything. If not, then the process of transferring the dollar somehow makes it worth more. This seems ... magical. Either way, the claim that the transfer results in a multiplier seems ludicrous.

Now, I know what you may be thinking. "Oh, but the point is, if you give a dollar to Ted, both Bill and Ted will buy a burger, instead of just the one burger that Bill buys; this means that two dollars are spent and the economy grows!" (The unstated basis of this argument is that it's OK to sacrifice future growth to obtain current growth.) However, this presumes that Bill doesn't adjust his spending to compensate for the missing dollar. And, that's still only $1.00 at most that would not have been spent otherwise; where's the other 80 cents?

Well, that was an ordeal

This is what happens when you don't log in to BlogSpot for a few years...

Tried to get onto BlogSpot. Oh no, it's been digested by the Googleplex. OK, fine, I don't remember the email address I used to create it in the first place, and forget about remembering the password, but that's what the "Forgot my ..." things are for. It has me give the blog URL, and it tells me that it sent instructions to ... my sbcglobal address. That narrows it down to 4 email accounts.

Start going through accounts. The admin account? Nope, no email there. My professional account? Also nope. I would not have used the iron.chef account (yes, of course I snagged that), so it's gotta be the one I created 8 years ago (and have never touched since) to create my MySpace account. And no, I don't remember that password either. And in the intervening years, they've added security questions and stuff, which I've never given answers to.

Go back to the admin account and see if I can reset passwords on the sub-accounts, and ... there's no link, no button, no nothing to let you do that. ?!?!

Fine, I call a number given on the website and talk to someone whose name sounded like Rain Man. Here's my name, here's my phone number, I'd like to reset a password on a sub-account, they offer to forward me to someone that will do it for a fee, wait, what?

Let's try this "chat with a live person" thing instead. Name, phone, address, etc., and "Timsy" wants the 4-digit security code that was assigned a decade ago. Ummm, I don't remember that. Favorite restaurant? Yeah, I know the answer to that one. Finally, progress; I have a fresh password for the account that may be the right one.

Log in to that email, and the friendly email from Google that gives easy-to-follow instructions to reset that password is not there. Check the iron.chef email and it's not there either. Repeat step 1 to send the email again, and it's still nowhere.

Aha, I bet I set it to forward emails to my work email... and indeed, it's forwarding them to an old old old work address. Set it up with a current address, repeat step 1 again, and ... well, here I am.

Of course, if none of this had happened, if I had just logged in and had access, then this post would have been a lot shorter...