What a bargain

According to Christine Romer, the chairwoman of the president's council of economic advisors, because of the stimulus bill, 2.5 million jobs have been saved or created as of the second quarter of 2010. That is truly a bargain.

Many in the country believe that the claim for jobs saved or created is nonsense. Obviously, millions of jobs have been lost and no one can identify jobs that were created. To make matters worse, it is impossible to point out jobs saved.

If one assumes, however, that the Obamacrats are correct and 2.5million jobs were saved or created, then one needs to look at the effectiveness of the bill. The stimulus involved spending about 800 billion dollars to save or create these jobs. That means that the Obamacrats have spent about $320,000 for each job they claim was saved or created. Indeed, the Obamacrats claim that there will be another million jobs also saved or created. That will bring the cost per job down to $230,000 per job.

My view is that we would have done much better had we simply picked out 15 million of the unemployed and given each of them $50,000. The cost of unemployment insurance would have fallen quickly, thereby saving enormous sums for the government. The spending by these folks would have given the whole economy a shot in the arm and created still further jobs, more tax revenues and thereby further cut the deficit. Millions of people would have been made happier with the receipt of enough to live for a year.

If there is any issue about how to choose those who were to get the money, we could either have used a lottery or we could have cut the amount to $30,000 and upped the number of folks getting checks to cover all of the unemployed (with money left over).

The truth is that the stimulus was nonsense. Obama and the Obamacrats should be ashamed of it, but they do not have it in them to know shame. Too bad for us all.