Obama's stimulus plan will cost at least $187,800 per new job.(Inside Track)(Barack Obama)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

According to Barack Obama's presidential transition team, the new stimulus plan being prepared by the upcoming Obama administration can be expected to create between 3.3 million and 4.1 million jobs. This is according to the Washington Times, which also pointed out that "the president-elect wants [the plan] to total slightly less than $800 billion but ... some Democratic leaders say [it] should near $1 trillion."

Even considering that government statistics are notoriously unreliable and tend to err on the side of special interests, it's worth considering what kind of bang for the buck the Obama plan, taken at face value, would deliver. If the plan creates the maximum number of jobs forecast (4.1 million) for the minimum projected expense ($770 billion is the most widely bruited amount), then the cost of the plan will be roughly $187,800 per job created. If the plan is minimally successful, then the sum of $1 trillion dollars being proposed by Democrats in Congress will yield a mere 3.3 million jobs, or a cost per new job of $303,000. If government statisticians are to be given any credence at all, then the real figure will probably come out somewhere between these two extremes.

Even the optimal figure of $187,800 is an extraordinary sum of money, equaled or exceeded by the annual salaries of a very small number of elite professionals and very successful entrepreneurs. Yet the ...