The White House Council of Economic Advisers today proudly praised the $787 billion stimulus program, claiming that it had created or saved 2.5 to 3.6 million jobs. Without bothering to debate how the Council arrived at its estimate of jobs saved or created, lets take the average of their estimated jobs (3.05 million) and divide by the cost of the stimulus program of $787 billion.
The government cost the taxpayers $262,333 to “save or create” each job. Putting aside the obvious nonsense that the government can “create” jobs, if the government continues to “create” jobs in this manner, the country will soon be bankrupt.
Based on the Council of Economic Advisers’ math, we could recover the 8 million jobs lost over the past 3 years at a cost of only $2.1 trillion dollars!
Some more fun facts:
The $787 billion “stimulus” program cost each of the estimated 105 million households in the US $7,495.
The average median household income in 2008 was $52,029.
One certainty is that the average American household would have spend the $7,495 much more wisely than government bureaucrats. The other certainty is that the government’s public relations effort praising the stimulus plan is just another waste of taxpayer time and money. According to the New York Times:
The latest CBS News poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans said the stimulus had not improved the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, at 9.5 percent, with few signs of improving in the short term. The reluctance of businesses to add jobs has weighed on other parts of the economy and there are signs that growth has begun to slow.
Aside from wasting $787 billion of the taxpayers money, the next most tragic part of this story is that the government continues to ignore the wisdom of the American people, and continues to insist that the program was a success. Joe Biden, regarded by many as the biggest buffoon in Washington, had this to say – “I am absolutely confident we are moving in the right direction, absolutely confident”. This statement should be more than enough to terrify most clear thinking Americans.
Statements made by an absolutely confident Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Depression:
August 11, 1928 – “Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. . . . We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a change to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with he help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.
November 1929 – “Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.”
January 21, 1930 – “Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the he temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.”
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