I worry when Mankiw cites Oregon

It is not often that I come across "Oregon" in serious economic policy analysis.  After all, while the state is famous for, among other things, microbreweries, hippies, Nike, it is not any leading light on economic issues.  Unless they are bad examples of economic policies!  Which is how Greg Mankiw uses one example from Oregon, in his detailed essay on the challenge government economists have faced over the past year and a half, and the lessons for the discipline itself.

(The essay is a wonderful illustration of how all the fancy math and jargon is not needed at all, even though at the drop of a hat economists would love to say "as a first approximation" and then scribble a couple of second-degree differential equations! It is a must-read in order to understand the points of departure in the economic recovery ideas debated: government spending versus tax incentives.)

Anyway, in discussing the jobs created or jobs saved claims of the Obama administration, Mankiw presents one of the issues related to this--data reporting errors and false claims (I wonder whether he intentionally chose not to quote Hayek in this context; I recall that Hayek wrote about how in a Soviet system bureaucrats have an incentive to misrepresent numbers):

Some employers, for instance, have counted money used to provide pay raises to existing employees as “creating” jobs. Thus the Wall Street Journal reported last November that the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency in Oregon had claimed to create 205 jobs with its $397,761 in stimulus money — spending less than $2,000 per “new” job.

Really?