What Could You Do With $278.000?

Once again we get another lesson that Government is not a very efficient allocator of capital. In a new release late Friday ("Seventh Quarterly Report"), the White House Council of Economic Advisors indicated that the stimulus plan saved or created 2.4 million jobs at a cost of $666 billion, or $287,000 per job. A reasonable person just might conclude that the stimulus did little to actually stimulate the economy but had a dramatic stimulative effect on the deficit. In fact, the taxpayers would have saved $247 billion if the government had just written $100K checks to the lucky 2.4 million.