As has been discussed here before, the net effect of the stimulus was to have the government go deep, deep, deep into debt in costing about $340,000 for each person it threw out of work. (I haven’t updated the figures recently; perversely, the stimulus’ cost per person unemployed has been falling as unemployment has risen.)
Today’s Environment Update by Roy Cordato (go here to sign up for it) discusses how the Department of Energy doled out over $5 million for each “green job” generated as part of the stimulus.
Roy’s newsletter came out early this afternoon. It turns out that it missed the news from later this afternoon. So we’ll let NRO’s Andrew Stiles fill us in on the Department of Energy’s announcement that it had approved new loan guarantees worth more than $1 billion for two solar energy companies — which would result, the DoE breathlessly tells us, in (dramatic fanfare) “45 permanent jobs.” Reader take note; only the strictest adherence to punctuation has prevented me from raining exclamation points down on this post.
Stiles notes: “That’s about $24 million spent for every permanent job created.”
Yes, $24 million to create a permanent job — folks, this is why government has to do it! Small businesses just don’t have the scratch to do it themselves.
