3 Responses to “Stimulus success? Jobs cost state $216G each” »»

1. Rich
   Comment by Rich | 10/29/09 at 11:38 am

   On a related issue:

   Edmunds: Cash for Clunkers cost taxpayers $24k per car, not $4k

   There is little doubt that Cash for Clunkers gave auto sales a big boost in late July and most of August, but there has been considerable debate as to how much help taxpayers’ $3 billion provided. Customers who purchased a new car or truck were rewarded in many ways, especially when you consider the U.S. government paid out a median price of about $4,000 per clunker. Those customers are also saving at the pump, as each car turned in was 4-10 mpg better than the vehicle it replaced. Dealers sold more cars. States received more tax dollars. So the program was a success, right?

   If you believe the statistical analysis of Edmunds, perhaps the program wasn’t so terrific after all. The industry research juggernaut claims that of the 690,000 vehicles sold under the program, only 125,000 of those sales went to people who weren’t going to purchase a new car in 2009. The result, says Edmunds, is that the $3 billion spent for C4C ended up spurring only 125,000 sales at a cost of $24,000 per vehicle. Further, Edmunds claims that October’s sales would have ramped up even more than what current projections indicate.

2. Aaron Weber
   Comment by Aaron Weber | 10/29/09 at 1:00 pm

   Now now — it’s not 80k/job: “Even if the $1.3 billion spent on direct benefits such as unemployment and Medicaid are taken out, that’s still more than $68,000 per job.”

   So, not counting the health insurance and unemployment insurance, we’re spending $68k/job. That’s a lot, but it’s not THAT much. The Herald says they workers would like to have the money. I’m sure they would. But then we wouldn’t get the things we paid them to do – get addicts clean, feed the homeless, repair the roads, get crooks off the streets…

   Say you pay to repair a bridge: It costs a hell of a lot of money, and involves the employment of about 100 people, plus maybe 50 more in the creation and distribution of the materials those 100 people use. Say, generously, you spend $1.5 million on refurbishing that bridge. Do you say “What a ripoff, that cost us $100,000 per job?”

   No. You say “we got a renovated bridge, and also kept 150 people employed, and kept their families insured against catastrophic illness, and kept them from having their homes foreclosed on, and kept their neighborhoods from the declining property values foreclosure brings, and kept their kids in the same schools so they can do better academically and graduate with decent skills, and kept the coffee shop across the street from the construction site in business, and also the bridge didn’t collapse and kill a bunch of people, or need to be entirely replaced at 10 times the cost five years from now.

   If you’re going to do a cost/benefit analysis, you might as well look at all the costs and all the benefits, not just the ones that make Deval Patrick look silly.

3. Tax jobs
   Comment by Tax jobs | 10/31/09 at 12:32 pm

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