Where are the jobs?

Oh, they are out there. A whole 30,083 of them. And it only took $16 Billion.



Here's the newest data about the $787 Billion Stimulus Fund. Approximately half has been awarded = $339 Billion. And out of that $339 Billion, the White House released data on $16 Billion.

Follow me here. This is fun, like connecting the expensive dots.

So out of that $16 Billion awarded, we have 30,083 jobs "saved or created." How do you count "saved" jobs? No one knows. Literally. No one. Not even the White House can explain how you calculate "saved" jobs.

But for the sake of this game, we'll let it stand.

So 30,083 jobs were "saved or created" out of the $16 Billion rewarded, which means the American taxpayers spent $532,000 per job.

Okay. Now we see what the government can do. They take $787B. Spend $393B. Report $16B. Spend $532K per job. Create "or save" 30,083 jobs. While 15.1 MILLION Americans are out of work.

If this is what the American people can expect out of the Stimulus bill, then by the end of the entire $787 Billion, only 1.48 Million jobs will have been "saved or created".

I'm so not impressed. As a self-employed American, with many friends and family battling to survive, losing their jobs, and beating the pavement to find work, I find these numbers disgusting.

Here's an anecdotal testament to our economic situation:

The other day I visited my father at work. He's a commissioned employee, by the way. I'll leave that statement alone. You can imagine the economic situation my family is currently under.
So while I'm there, he can't get off the phone. He answers, talks for a few minutes, hangs up. And the phone rings again.
With work? No. With men looking for work.
My dad is in the commercial construction business. Installers, workers, tile layers, carpet layers, all these men who are usually so busy my dad fights for time to schedule them on his jobs, are now all out of work. And many have been out of work for a month or more. Highly skilled, proficient, professional, men in the construction business, men who were targets of this supposed Stimulus package, men who would be employed by all these "shovel-ready" jobs Obama promised, are out of work. And there is no work on the horizon. Many are looking to move away from construction and into any other industry hiring. Government, maybe?

Seeing the reality of big government spending and private sector punishment, we're suppose to be jazzed about 30,083 jobs nationwide "saved or created" by spending $16 Billion? I. Think. Not.

Here are a few questions left unanswered:

- Why didn't the White House release the data on the remaining Stimulus funds spent? They only reported on $16 Billion of the $393 Billion. How has the rest been spent?

- Why did the White House last month claimed a million jobs had been "saved or created" when it was only 30,083? Shouldn't we get an explanation why they lied?

- How will these funds be paid back? Ed Morrissey at HotAir put a pencil to paper and explains how long it will take to replace the funds spent.

Now, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the jobs we “saved or created” pay the national average salary of $50,000 and are permanently saved or created, a very generous assumption consider the kind of temporary hiring that we have seen from this effort. If each of these jobs paid an effective federal income tax rate of 15%, it would take over 70 years for them to pay back the money we spent on Porkulus, and that doesn’t count the interest we will pay on those funds. At a 20% effective tax rate, it would take over 53 years.

It's time to listen to Sean Penn and Michael Moore. You heard me right. They want us to be more like Cuba. Well, Cuba's turning to capitalism to save their economy. So come on Moore, let's be like Cuba.