So the White House is touting a Bloomberg piece with the favorable headline: “Obama’s Jobs Plan Prevents Election Year Recession in Survey of Economists.” You can certainly expect to hear this line repeated as the president continues to campaign for reelection tout his jobs package in swing-states across the country, urging Congress to “pass this bill.”
But while the White House team evidently stands by this Bloomberg survey, they are probably hoping you won’t read past the headline. In fact, according to the median estimate of the 34 economists surveyed, the president’s jobs bill would “add or keep” 275,000 jobs in 2012, and just 13,000 in 2013.
That comes out to a total of 288,000 jobs ‘kept or added’ over the next two years. That figure is far more sobering (and credible) than Democratic economist du jour Mark Zandi’s extravagant prediction that the president’s bill would add 1.9 million in 2012 alone. Obama’s bill, meanwhile, carries a $447 billion price tag, which works out to a little more than $1.6 million for every job ‘kept or added.’ Simple math, as the president would say.
On the plus side, that’s a bargain compared to the $23 million-per-job the Department of Energy has “invested” as part of the loans program that helped finance Solyndra. But it’s still hard to see how spending $447 billion to create 288,000 jobs over two years is an efficient way to foster economic growth, or even the most efficient way to “avoid a return to recession.” Either way, at this point, almost three years into the Obama presidency, when even Democrats admit they own the economy, isn’t avoiding another recession a pretty low bar?
House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) has said the House is willing to consider elements of the president’s jobs bill. But as he also pointed out in a recent speech at the Economic Club in Washington, D.C., the majority of the president’s proposals “are a poor substitute for the pro-growth policies that are needed to remove barriers to job creation in America.”
Of course, Obama isn’t the only one with a jobs plan.
I'm a one man software company. I'm about to take a huge risk and hire one additional software engineer at $100k. Seems like I'm living on another planet when I read articles like this.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the going rate is 1.6 million per job, then most Americans should agree to quit theirs, opening it up for someone else, in return for a check for 1.6 mil from the treasury. I'm no expert investor, but I'm darn sure I could get a 5 percent per year return, which would amount to $80K per year. Not only is that far above the median income, in many cases most of it would be capital gains and therefore subject to a 15% tax rate, making the take-home $68K. The proper response to Obama-esque "job creation" is this: Keep your dang jobs, and have mine, too. I'll take the cash, move to a red state with low cost of living, and effectively double my quality of life. More money, more free time, no boss!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI often think something similar -- don't spend $1 million "creating a job" for me, just give me the cash and I'll retire!!
In return I'll spend all that taxpayer dough over the next 25 years "stimulating the economy with consumer spending." It's not wasteful see, it's an investment in future economic growth! Stimulus that keeps on giving! It's simple math!!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf they are going to spend the money, let's get some real stimulous out of it rather than paying off Obama's union thugs and political cronies. Give $1.6M each to 288,000 Obama voters. They'll squander it all within two years. At least the money will go into the private sector.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell; at least it is less than Michelle has spent on vacations! (Trying to look at the bright side here.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the economy ever recovers, we should be adding more than 288,000 private sector jobs every MONTH. Obama's plan takes 2 years? (And can anyone explain what a "saved job" is?) Piffle.
Total labor force is 150 million plus. 288k new jobs created in one month would bring the unemployment rate down by 0.2% at most. But spread over two years, that's 2 or 3 MILLION jobs short of the number needed to keep pace with population growth.
We need a new word that is much stronger than "cynical" to describe Obama policies. It's hard to believe he can even take himself seriously anymore!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusekinggeorge2 is correct. The word he is looking for is "malicious" which could be used to replace "cynical" in describing Obama's policies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf Obama just gave the 280,000 people $1.6 million think of all the new people he can whack with his "Buffett Rule".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou want a tangible solution? Here it is, a forced cause/effect model that actually returns all the money and then some:
External Link
I challenge you, outside of the government being needed to make it happen, to find a reason why it wouldn't work better than ANY other plan put forth yet.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe GOV cannot create jobs. Think of it this way. For the GOV to create a job it needs to acquire funding. This is acquired through taxing ( taking money from ) business and individuals within the economy. Thus, it takes funding from existing business to "invest" in gov funded projects.
Problem is that GOV is notoriously inefficient. Notice all the Solar loans going to politically connected parties. Notice how the same Sonara executives along with Pelosi's brother in law are getting a new loan today for 770M.
It is precisely due to this inefficiency ( funds going to privileged parties ) that it cost 1.5M / job. But this 1.5M is taken from the general economy and thus results in a LOSS of jobs greater than those "produced" by the Gov.
I will grant that Pelosi, Obama, Union bosses, and the parties-that-be do benefit from such programs ... probably to the tune of 1.4M / job.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou have your sums wrong.
The Obamanomics job plan is about saving one job, and the cost would be $400 Billion.
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