Happy Fourth of July!

I saw an interesting article in The Weekly Standard. A couple of lines made me laugh, and cry:

the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job. In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

I like to cite statistics to point out incompetence as much as anyone, but this gave me pause. Yeah, cutting a $100,000 check to 2.4 million people would have cost less money and been more stimulative in the short term, but what about the long term?

The $100k payment would be a one time deal. The job created by forking over $278,000, on the other hand, will hopefully be there for a long time. It is conceivable that the people hired or spared might, after some period of time, however long it is, produce more than $278,000 worth of products and services. Or am I kidding myself? (The banks are hoarding most of the stimulus, corrupt officials and others took a large chunk, and most of the jobs that were created were low paying service jobs.) Just something to think about.

Anyway, it's fourth of July. It's time to get back to what's important: blowing up Chinese made fireworks to celebrate our independence.