White House: 3.6 Million Jobs Lost is “Quite Positive”
Posted October 15th, 2009 at 3.30pm in Enterprise and Free Markets.
The Obama administration released the first hard numbers on how many jobs their $787 billion stimulus package has created or saved on Recovery.gov today. The number: 30,383 jobs from roughly $16 billion worth of stimulus contracts awarded directly by federal agencies.
Crunching the numbers, that comes to $533,000 per job “saved or created.” To put those 30,383 jobs in perspecitve, consider that the U.S. economy lost 263,000 net jobs just last month and has lost 3.6 million net jobs since President Barack Obama was sworn into office.
But the administration also claims that federal contractor spending is just one portion of the overall stimulus “buckshot.” Last month at the Brookings Institute, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that White House computer models showed their stimulus plan had already saved between 500,000 and 750,000. And just how accurate are these White House economic models? Well, when the White House was pitching its plan to the American people, White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein wrote a report claiming the stimulus would keep unemployment under a peak of 8%. And what have actual Bureau of Labor and Statistics shown? A a 26-year record high of 9.8% unemployment rate.
So what does Bernstein have to say about the stimulus now? Associated Press reports:
Jared Bernstein, the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said it was too early to draw conclusions from the data “but the early indications are quite positive.”
Heritage fellow J.D. Foster explains where Bernstein’s fancy model went wrong:
The Keynesian stimulus theory fails for the simple reason that it is only half a theory. It correctly describes how deficit spending can raise the level of demand in part of the economy, and ignores how government borrowing to finance deficit spending automatically reduces demand elsewhere. Exculpatory allusions to idle saving simply do not wash in a modern economy supported by a modern financial system. Deficit spending does not create real purchasing power and so it cannot increase total demand in the economy. Deficit spending can only shift the pattern of demand toward government-centric preferences.
- Author: Conn Carroll
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October 15, 2009 Leon, Durango, CO writes:
My ears went up when Obama changed is tune from “Creating new jobs” to “SAVING or creating new jobs.” Right away I knew that Obama’s mouth was moving again. You can’t count SAVED jobs and that hides the fact he hasn’t been able to create but a handful of government jobs. No surprise these liars are saying “Good News!” every time we lose another quarter million jobs. “It wasn’t as bad as we thought!” So when all the jobs are gone they will be saying “Good News!” but they really mean it. The good news is that the American Economy will have failed and Karl Marx’s 100 year program will have been completed by our DIS-loyal opposition. These guys are traitors, plain and simple.
Now then, Nancy Pelosi wants a Value Added Tax, not to replace our regressive Income Tax but IN ADDITION to the Income Tax. Imagine how many jobs there will be saved by our having no capital at all. With a VAT they will take your Capital away before anything is ever sold. It is the only thing more regressive than the Graduated Income Tax. Obama will be saving us from having to work, so I guess that is what he really means by “jobs saved.”