Is he as stupid as Bush, becoming noticably senile or just completely out of his element when speaking about the economy?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080624/pl_bloomberg/ajxbcbplynwy
McCain's EBay Model for Jobs Finds Few Buyers Among Economists
June 24 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain's model for ginning up the economy isn't Keynesian or Milton Friedmanite. It's EBay Inc.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee regularly asserts that 1.3 million people worldwide ``make a living off EBay.'' He holds up the figure as evidence the world's largest Internet auctioneer is a model for job and economic growth.
McCain, seeking to address voter anxiety about the economy, uses EBay to signal that he is ``fundamentally optimistic about the capacity of the U.S. economy to innovate, for that innovation to give new opportunities for jobs,'' said Doug Holtz-Eakin, the candidate's senior economic adviser. ``We shouldn't be obsessed with looking backwards all the time, and saying, `Gee, where did those jobs go?''' [color="Red"][odin-Forget everything that happened 5 minutes ago. Concentrate only on what we tell you now.]This affection for EBay as an engine for job creation, however, confounds economists such as Betsey Stevenson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia.
``In terms of jobs, there's no net increase in GDP that comes from trading stuff that's already made,'' said Stevenson, author of a study on the Internet and employment levels. ``New people selling stuff out of their closet on EBay isn't growing the economy.''