The Standard analyzed a stimulus status report released by the White House on Friday, July 1st. By crunching the numbers on money spent ($666 billion) and jobs created (2.4 million) to date, they concluded that the government spent an average of $278,000 for each job.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-economists-stimulus-has-cost-278000-job_576014.html
The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.
But as "shocking" as that news might be to stimulus supporters, there is something even more shocking revealed... to whit, the stimulus has been hurting the economy over the past six months or so.
Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.
The economy would now be generating job growth at a faster rate if the Democrats hadn’t passed the “stimulus.”
And remember, the data being analyzed here was produced by the White House economic advisors!
Now, aren't you glad that the Democrats are in charge of the nation's purse strings?
Yeah, me neither.
There is a web site: stimuluswatch.org/, which details, package by package and state by state, the entire stimulus package.
ReplyDeleteIf you spend an hour gazing at Bama, you come across two interesting stimulus packages. One town asked for a $6k transmission job for their one and only police car (with four new high-performance tires). Another town asked for six new cop cars. Both towns got what they asked for. How did this help anyone? Well...the local transmission guy had another job to perform, and the GM folks sold six more cop cars.
A waste for the whole thing? Yes. My hometown, which shall remain nameless (from Bama) asked for a new bridge (not to replace any of the current bridges). They wanted to build a bridge across a wetlands swamp area to a corn field of thousands of acres, which local developers had picked up years ago and been waiting for someone with loot to build it. Who will complain about wetlands & construction of bridge? Not the environmental folks because it's a democratic city council that developed this whole thing. The local newspaper? They basically report house fires and robberies...and wouldn't dare explain how land speculation & government money figure into corruption.
It's probably one of the saddest events of my 52-odd years to watch. Money tossed to the wind and nothing in the economy ever got fixed by the money. We could have even built the fancy security fence from Texas to California to keep illegal aliens out but even that wasn't corrupt enough to fit the grand scheme of things.