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Monday, November 27, 2006
The $1.1 Trillion Jobs Creation Program
The Center for American Progress points out that President Bush is responsible for perhaps the most expensive jobs program ever:
Based on the administration’s estimate that its tax cuts should be credited for creating approximately one-quarter of all new jobs...we can attribute 1.3 million jobs out of the 5.0 million newly created jobs since the start of the recovery in late 2001 to the White House’s tax cuts...According to estimates by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax cuts during the same time period totaled $1.1 trillion.
This means that even under the most optimistic assumptions about the relationship between tax cuts and jobs pushed by the White House, the Bush economic brain trust managed to spend $871,000 on every new job it claims to have created since 2001.
Government policies that create jobs are certainly laudable, but surely there are more efficient means by which the government could go about achieving this goal. And considering that the current recovery’s job and wage growth records has been somewhat short of stellar, one wonders if Bush’s massive tax cuts might have been inspired by other aims.
(hat tip Inclusionist.org)
Posted by Craig Jennings
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