Jobs Created or Saved, Really?

I have never heard the term jobs created or saved before until the current Presidential Administration of Barack "ManChild" Obama. (I love Rush) What is a saved job? How does one tell if a job is saved? We are told all the time how many jobs are lost and how many jobs are created and that makes sense to some degree if you believe that the data source is legitimate. I however am always a little skeptical when I hear brand new statistics being reported.

Let's look at baseball. When I was a kid I never, never even considered how many pitches a guys threw. I had a vague idea that a pitcher would throw a hundred and some odd pitches if he threw the whole game but no one cared. Then came pitch count and every manager some how now knows that 100 pitches seems to be the cap. We can look back into history and find many examples of pitchers who threw allot more than 100 pitches and lot more often than today's guys. But someone decided to count pitches and now we have a whole new philosophy based on pitch count. At least in baseball you have a count, a clear concise number easily found and confirmed by anyone who cares to look. No disputes, no scandal just another number to go into the history books.

Now politics unlike baseball is much more complicated so many times there is no clear concise number to go to for proof. This makes it all the more difficult when someone comes up with a whole new statistic. Even more maddening is that no one is asking the question. What is a saved job? How is it calculated? How do you know it's SAVED? Is it safe forever, another year, another few weeks? But no, President Obama's administration is telling us the jobs are created or saved and we are to applaud them for it, were it not for their quick action 640,000 more people might be unemployed.

What do the numbers mean? The numbers change from month to month so I'm going to round down to the nearest million. But there are about 12 million people unemployed right now. The unemployment rate is just below 10%. The government reports about 5 to 6 million people are collecting Unemployment payments. This means roughly 7 million are not, but for the sake of argument let's look at just the folks who are collecting benefits. 640K is 10% of 6 Million so for all the hard work and tax dollars spent, Obama has managed to make a 10% dent in overall unemployment or a 1% dent in the unemployment rate. If you look at the whole picture it's more like 4% The Stimulus was $787 Billion so to bring unemployment back to a 4% margin we would need to eliminate another 6%. That would only cost $4.7 Trillion to help ALL the unemployed or a meager $1.5 Trillion is we only care about the folks who are collecting benefits.

Let's come back to reality for a minute and only look at what has actually been done. The 640,000 jobs saved or created is a White House number, they gave it and are happy about it. They want us all to be excited about 640,000 jobs.

Yay Obama your our man if you can't do it no one can, GOOOOOO Obama!!!

Now many crazy right wing extremists don't believe the 640K is real but again for arguments sake I'm going to front them a modest 640,000 jobs. The White House claims only $340 Billion of the 787 has been committed so far and half of that went for small business loans. (My right wing extremist friends and I don't believe that either but oh well) That means by using their numbers $170 Billion created or saved the 640,000 jobs.

Do you see where I'm going with this???

Yes, you and I and all of our fellow U.S. Citizens. Tax payers and welfare leeches alike have allowed the Government to spend $265,625.00 per job saved or created. Yup! Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it? Just think how big of an impact it would have on the country if instead of creating or saving those jobs Obama would have said, "if you lose your job we will pay your living expenses for 2 to 4 years and pay your tuition for a trade school or local college so you can learn new skills for a better job. With an allowance of $30,000 per year for rent/mortgage and food and $12,000 per year for tuition. 640,000 people would only have cost us $168,000 each.

If we did that for ALL of the unemployed people in the U.S. right now, it would cost a smidge over $1 Trillion dollars. I'm not saying I support this idea but just consider for a little more than the Stimulus bill each person who lost their job could have instead of collecting a few hundred dollars a week for a few months could have received an education or training for 4 years.

Cheers,

Mike