“The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 — and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.”

….

“The point is that nobody really believes that a dollar of tax cuts is always better than a dollar of public spending. Meanwhile, it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts — and therefore costs less per job created (see the previous fraudulent argument) — because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.”

Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/opinion/26krugman.html?hp 

Paul Krugman is like the Joker – we let him loose to go after Bush and now he wants to watch the whole world burn. In response to the Republicans’ flawed per job cost estimate, he makes an equally bad cost estimate per job, and totally misses the point. You can’t take the cost of the stimulus and divide it by jobs created, that’s useless. It’s useless if you calculate off jobs created in the first year or jobs created during the life of the program. Their way, Krugman’s way, useless. Materials are going to go into whatever’s created, money’s going to leak out of the country to other countries, some of the money will go to people who are already employed. The point isn’t the cost per job, it’s the necessity of the projects undertaken and their usefulness in the future. It’s taking productive capacity and making things that are, well, productive. (more…)