Saturday, November 08, 2003

 
THE TWO MILLION DOLLAR MEN.
External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/business/08ECON.html

Everybody is making such a fuss over the new report of 126,000 new jobs created in the last quarter. They should, but not for the reason they have been.

When Bush proposed his 250 billion dollar tax cut for the wealthy, he promised it would create one million jobs. In fact, even with these new jobs, the total number of jobs has fallen substantially since those tax cuts were enacted. But let's even put that aside, for the moment, and (ridiculously) give the tax cuts full credit for all 126,000 jobs, without charging it for the net loss in jobs, nor the fact that even this growth is less than it was when Bush took office.

So, even if Bush's tax cut got 126,000 NET new jobs (which it didn't), that still would be almost two million dollars per new job. Is that a good deal? Just putting two million dollars in the bank at 5% interest gets you a hundred thousand dollars a year, even after you retire, and even after you die. Instead, these people are working for a year, and only getting, say, twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars. Maybe a few of those new jobs will get up to over a hundred thousand dollars eventually, but I think it's safe to say that most of them will stay at $50,000 or below.

And I know, I know, we didn't just throw the 250 billion dollars away. The rich people have that money, and these people have these jobs, too. But the rich have gotten this gift from the Bush administration at your expense. That's money that you now owe some big corporation or foreign government, because the treasury borrowed it in your name, instead of collecting it in taxes. The average family's share of the Federal debt is now over seventy thousand dollars, and it's getting worse. And for what? A net loss of jobs, that includes one quarter of anemic growth.

This is The Official Record. 11:26 AM
link to this item: http://www.creamy.com/blog/2003/11/two-million-dollar-men.html

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