Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News estimated that Obama's $447 billion jobs proposal would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls. Those were the median estimates of 34 economists. The program also would reduce the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, according to the surveyed economists' projections
Two hundred seventy-five thousand jobs for $447 billion comes to a bit more than $1.6 million a job. Hold on though. Things may not be that bad. A Harvard economist working with the same numbers cuts the cost per job by 87.5%, to $200,000 a job.
Looks like a rip off no matter how one finagles the numbers.
ABC News reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "didn't dispute" the lowball Harvard estimate "but said the price tag is the wrong way to measure the proposal's worth. He didn't suggest any alternative as a proper way to evaluate it.
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