Let's use $20/hour for a hypothetical road repair construction wage. There are 2080 "working" hours in a year, less holidays, leaving 2000 working hours per vacationless, no-sick-dayless year. On top of that is another 11% minimum for FICA, workmen's comp. unemployment insurance, etc - often more. Doing the math, these jobs are gonna cost BO $44,400 per job-year. A little more math shows that BO's $1.36 billion buys 30,630 direct job-years. Historically, every basic job has generated 0.6 additional jobs. So, the number grows to a tad over 49,000 job-years.
At a $7.15 minimum wage, the total jumps to a little over 137,000 job-years. That's about 5.48% on BO's 2.5 million job target. This is the bulk of the job creation brainstorm. Only 2,363,000 jobs left to go.
The cost is about 0.16% of the $850 billion that Congress MIGHT bump the package to. Where does the other $848.64 billion go? There's $400 billion going to states over two years. Still missing $448.64 billion (a little less than $1500 per capita).
Gotta pay of this package somehow. Tax revenues will be down in a down economy. And there's a proposed tax cut of $140 billion (about $460 per capita). Two options, or some combination thereof; borrow or print. There is concern about an adequate source of lenders, especially if the dollar drops as predicted, so BO cannot be sure of that option. Printing (monetizing) drives inflation at a very bad time, but it's an
option that will be there - and note that inflation is just a somewhat different form of tax.
In BO's defense, he knows that the auto shoe is timed to drop on him at the worst possible moment. This is a lot of jobs at stake, at an unknown cost IF he can get something through Congress. That's a real IF given that there has been competent balking just to push the drop dead date to inauguration. The absence of any detail at all from the BO camp on this issue speaks volumes (of financial porn), and not just about the
auto mess.
BO has known for certain that this was gonna be his baby for 50 days. His feet hit the ground in 26 days (including 2 holidays). And he's on vacation (shades of early W). This am's news and data suggest that the ppt is NOT on vacation, and that's not in BO's favor.
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