My Republican friend says "Obama's stimulus cost roughly 240K per job." What is she talking about?

[secondwind]

I have no response, and I'd love to give it to her.

She also says that 6.4 billion went to fictitious zip codes!

[midnight]

1. K&R so that someone who understands this better can help out...

[louis-t]

2. Ask her where she got that number.

If she says Glenn Beck, laugh in her face and don't stop laughing until she walks away with her head down.

[secondwind]

3. It's a start......I'll do that...

[Clio the Leo]

5. They dont cite their sources....

... Cantor has been Twitter-bashing the Recovery Act all day with NO sources to back up his claims. (He never does actually.) He just throws stuff out into the cosmos.

They just make crap up. Their supporters aren't smart enough to question them.

[louis-t]

13. "Their supporters aren't smart ...

enough to question them". You hit the naill on the head.

[NoNothing]

11. Possibly recovery.gov?

From recovery.gov, it shows 158 gigadollars + 41 gigadollars spent, for a total of 199 gigadollars. It also shows jobs created as 595,263. Divide and you get about $334,300 per job. This is actually higher than the OP's number, so maybe that was from when less stimulus money was awarded.

[louis-t]

15. What in the name of all that's holy

is a "gigadollar"?

[NoNothing]

16. Giga=1 billion or 1 milliard depending on your nationality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix

[dbmk]

25. And thats not accounting for the gain of creating said jobs. n/t

[JI7]

4. ask HER to prove it and explain it first

[11 Bravo]

6. The stimulus provided much more than just jobs. It paid for materials ...

infrastructure, transportation expenses, and a host of other peripheral costs. Please tell your friend for me that they are a fucking idiot.

[Cha]

9. Yeah, the Recovery isn't

a regurgitated negavtive soundbyte..it's an enormous undertaking to bring our country back from the brink in every aspect.

[Inuca]

10. Not to mention tax cuts

extension of unemployment benefits, etc., etc., etc. I heard this talking point before and it drives me NUTS. They are simply and roughly dividing the total cost of the stimuls package by the number of jubs created, completely ignoring all the other things included. The lack of good faith is revolting.

[Cha]

7. Yeah, ask which hateradio head or fauxsn00zer

she got that from.

I hear people spouting negative things against the Obama White House all the time and I know they didn't come up with that themselves but are only regurgitating the brainwashing.

[otohara]

8. Here's Some Background

Swampland
A blog about politics.
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The Hoover Caucus
Posted by Joe Klein Monday, January 19, 2009 at 6:16 pm
28 Comments • Trackback (3)

This would be infuriating if it weren't so pathetic. I could go through this line by line, but let's just take the top-line talking point, which John Boehner's office has been peddling to willing journo-stenographers: that the stimulus package is going to cost $275,000 per new job created.

Well. First of all $300 billion of the $825B is going to tax relief, which is not at all job-creation related. Another $200 or so billion is going to the states, to enable them to maintain the services they currently provide, also not job-creation related. When you throw in the money going for food stamps, extended unemployment insurance and so forth, you're down to a much smaller number per job created--you'll excuse me if I haven't done the math--much of which will be involved in projects that will save money in the long (retrofitting federal buildings will lead to lower energy costs, for example), make us less dependent on foreign oil, greener and stronger. For the best account of the possibilities and pitfalls of the stimulus plan that I've read, check out Michael Grunwald's excellent piece in this week's Time.

Are there crap projects that will be funded? Undoubtedly. Will the stimulus turn the economy around? Maybe not. (Paul Krugman and others argue it should be larger). But Jennifer Rubin's drivel is an exemplar of the kind of phony-baloney propaganda that we've seen, sadly, from Republicans in recent years, since their "new" ideas either grew old or proved defective. These are not serious arguments; they are, in fact, insulting. They assume a witless populace.

I'd hope that we'd have an intellectually responsible Loyal Opposition that will help hone the fat out of the Obama Administration's proposals; John Boehner's name has never been associated with the words "intellectual" or "responsible." I suspect the G.O.P. will remain in the wilderness for as long as it thinks it can hoodwink the public with such slovenly thinking.

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/01/19/the-hoover-caucus/#ixzz0fpmnxli8


http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/01/19/the-hoover-caucus/

[Milo_Bloom]

12. It's right and wrong at the same time.

It is called fun with statistics.

The question is what jobs do you attach to the stimulus?

For example, let's say 240K to a particular school SAVED 10 jobs and created 1 job, you could argue that the it cost 240K to create 1 job.. OR you could say that they spent 21K per job, assigning all jobs to the money.

[Peacetrain]

14. Sounds like Beckian reasoning.. lets just look at this real quick

The administration says we saved at least 2,000,000 jobs .. lets just say what CNN did last Oct.. 640,000..

Now the stimulus was 780,000,000.. something to that effect

Out of that came all the science grants, the tax cuts for small businesses and all of us got a tax cut.. the largest investment ever in green technologies.. etc etc etc.

Just put all that aside for a sec.

They have spent roughly half the 780 million.. if we just divided the 790 million by that 640,000 saved.. it would come out a half of what your friend claimed, and that does not even include the tax cut that 95% of us got..

It is concrete, grants, taxcuts, just sit down with a calculator with her.. maybe she will turn off Beck

[peace13]

17. She's talking about you finding another friend!! n/t

[secondwind]

18. LOL....she's becoming very tiresome....you may be right!

[ProSense]

19. Try

this

[vaberella]

20. Thanks for this. Your so cool. What in cookies name is the ARRA? n/t

[ProSense]

21. The

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

[vaberella]

28. Oh...thats the full name. Oooooh!! I always just went by the Recovery Act.

So I had a brain fart moment. Excuse me. :D

[LiberalFighter]

22. I don't believe the majority of the money has even been spent or allocated

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. She's dividing the size of the package by jobs saved/created

3.4 million jobs x 240,000 / job = a little over 800 billion so I assume that's where she's coming from.

[dbmk]

24. Ask her how money can go to fictitious places

They can be _reported_ as going to zip codes that don't exist. But that can be a clerical error.

Ask her if she knows if the money went to the wrong places.

I have debated this with other people who kept insisting that the money went to non existing places. Just hilarious. :)

[Little Star]

26. Bookmarking for later. k&r n/t

[mascarax]

27. Yes, it's ALL true - tell her! Tell her the truth...

$240K per job - try $240M per!

And $16.4 TRillion to fictitious zip codes. She's low balling it, c'mon.

PLUS tell her, tell her the truth: "they" are coming for her...may not be Obama himself, but They will come. No doubt about it. And They will drain her bank account so she should probably take out everything in cash TODAY (OK, tomorrow at the latest) and put it in one of those investment companies that advertise on Glenn Beck's show! That's her only hope. Or just give it to Glenn for safekeeping (you know HE can be trusted).

I'll stop now. This is fun.

[harkadog]

29. You can get these figures from the government's website

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx The stimulus bill was 787 billion. Of that the government claims "2 million jobs created or saved" Nice round number. You divide the cost by the number of jobs and you get a cost of $393,500 a job. Now only 279 billion has been spent. So you can divide that number by 2 million and you get $139,500. I think that is the closest figure. Maybe we should have directly paid people say 65k and we would have saved half the money.

[high density]

30. The WH estimates government spending of $92k creates a "job year"

A job year is one job for a year.

$288b of the stimulus is tax cuts, and that's estimated to be even less efficient in its creation of "job years" than direct government spending.

Since most workers earn much less than $92,000 a year, the figure of $92,000 per job-year may seem large. The source of the gap between average wages and the cost per job-year is that the increase in GDP resulting from stimulus does not all take the form of wages for newly-employed workers. Some workers switch from part-time to full-time; some find their existing time at their jobs more fully utilized; and some add overtime. Further, there are increases in compensation costs other than wages, and in rents, profits, and other types of non-compensation income. A useful comparison is that the ratio of annual GDP to total employment in the economy is about $105,000. Thus, a figure of $92,000 per job-year is plausible and represents a very reasonable “bang for the buck.”

http://www.recovery.gov/About/Documents/Jobs_Report_Final.pdf

[harkadog]

31. Part of it comes down to the 2 million jobs "saved" or created

I don't believe nice round numbers that look nice on press releases. Who is doing the counting and how are they doing it to get "2 million"?