MaverickVoice.com

I was at the grocery store the other day, and, standing in the checkout line, paying for my purchases, I looked at the cashier and thought, “I just saved your job.” So, that’s one.  I dropped off my rent a couple weeks back and, handing my check over the counter, I thought, “I just saved your job.” That makes two.  I went to the gas station, bought some gas and waved at the attendant inside thinking, “I just saved your job.” There’s three.

President Obama has laid claim to “Creating or Saving” over 600,000 jobs since taking office and signing the “Stimulus Bill” into law. No, really, he’s said it. He increases the number every couple of weeks to give people the impression that he’s keeping a running total. Maybe he has one of those little clickers in his pocket and, every time he comes into contact with someone, he just clicks that number a little higher.

I’m really not sure how one counts a “Saved Job.” Economists are baffled at the very thought. Still, that doesn’t keep our Government from making the claim. Go to www.recovery.gov and you can check out a map with all the states to find out how much “Stimulus Money” has been allocated to each state, how much money has been received thus far and how many jobs have been created there. The State of Florida, for example, has received $402,300,000 out of the $6,779,160,000 allocated to it (a little less than 6%) and has “Created” 29,321 new jobs. (That means it cost a little over $13,700 to create each job, on average.) (As of 9/2009, Florida reported an 11.2% unemployment rate.)

What about New York?  They’ve received $1,270,830,000 of their $10,599,030,000 allocation (Nearly 12% of their allocation) to “create” 40,620 new jobs, for an average price per job of $31,285 per job. (As of 9/2009, New York reported an 8.8% unemployment rate.)

California? They’ve received $8,180,540,000 of their $18,534,840,000 allocation (a little more than 44%) to “create” 110,185 new jobs, or an average of $74,244 per job. (As of 9/2009, California reported a 12% unemployment rate.)

How about the great State of Kansas? They’ve received $452,910,000 of the $1,313,580,000 allocated to them (approximately 34.5% of those funds) to “create” 5,935 new jobs. On average, that’s about $76,300 per job. (As of 9/2009, Kansas reported a 6.9% unemployment rate.) Apparently, it costs a lot of money to create a job in Kansas.

(Source for Unemployment Data: US Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/bls/unemployment.htm)

The recovery.gov website indicates that a total of 640,329 jobs have been “Created or Saved” nationally as of October 30,2009. There is no entry in it’s published Glossary of Terms defining exactly what it considers a job, a new job, or a saved job, and I couldn’t find how these jobs were counted. This is a Government run website, by the way, not some third party analysis site, so I’m using the Government’s own facts & figures.

Now, this is just me, looking at the information, and trying…desperately…to figure it out. What is a “Saved Job,” and how is it counted? Are these “Saved Jobs” included in the number of “New Jobs” indicated by their own data per state, or are the “Saved Jobs” reported in some obscure corner of their website? How are they counted? Is there somebody calling all of the businesses and asking, “How Many People DIDN’T you fire because of the Stimulus Program?” Really, folks, it’s a legitimate question.

Here’s another very legitimate question: Of the reported 640,329 jobs that have been “Created or Saved,” how many are Government Jobs, and how many are in the Private Sector?  Remember, “Government Jobs” are jobs that are paid for through your TAX DOLLARS, while “Private Sector Jobs” are jobs that are paid for through the income of a private business. In other words, a Private Sector Job is self-sustaining, while a Government Job is going to continue to cost the Government, and, by proxy, YOU, to support that job.

I know that many of you will think that this is just an Obama Bash Blog, and that I’m being unfair. I really don’t think I am. If George W. Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, or any Republican were in office and making these same claims, I’d do the same thing I’m doing now and calling “Bullshit!”

For the record, I was recently unemployed, but am finally back to work. I had to change the type of work I’m doing, and I’m earning about 30% of my previous income, but I’m working. My job was CREATED by a small business that was expanding and needed an extra set of hands to get through the work. They haven’t received a dime in Government money to create the job, and won’t receive a dime in Government money to sustain it. If business drops off, mine is the job that will be cut FIRST, so I’m motivated to work hard to make sure that our customers are taken care of.

So, I ask you, will the Government claim that they had something to do with the Creation of my job, or the Saving of it to puff that number up? Who knows? But one thing I can tell you for certain: the national unemployment rate keeps rising. If they are creating or saving jobs, they aren’t doing either fast enough to fix that problem, so they need a new plan. Maybe instead of spending millions of dollars on their website, they should take an economics class and learn about a little thing called Capitalism. Maybe if they were to understand how the economy works, they might just be able to understand how to fix it.

Filed under: Finance/Economy, Politics by T. Edwin Perry