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Reader comment on: Richard Epstein on Obama's Jobs Plan

Submitted by Fast Eddie (United States), Nov 4, 2011 13:46

Epstein's comments raise a critical issue that is consistently ignored (suppressed?) by

the MSM and, unfortunately also ignored by Republican politicians who should be raising it

every time they can: It is what economists and others refer to as 'opportunity cost', in this

instance being the lost opportunities for productive use of money that the government wants

to divert to uses determined by government. As far as I know, there are only 3 ways to fund

Obama's spending sprees: (1) higher taxes; (2) more debt; and (3) wholesale creation of

'money' by the Fed without issuing debt instruments. All three of these rob the private sector

(individuals and businesses) of opportunities for productive use of their capital. It is truly sad

to contemplate how many productive job-producing small businesses could have been created

with the $500 Million wasted by Obama on Solyndra. And, of course, the actual cost of Solyndra

will far exceed $500 Million when the interest the govt must pay on that borrowed money is added

to the principal lost. Which, by the way, brings up another issue that Republicans are ignoring:

The next time Obama announces he's submitted legislation to the congress to spend,

say, $250 Billion on a set of make-work proposals, Republicans should immediately point out that

the eventual total cost to taxpayers will be at least twice that much because the money is borrowed,

which, of course, immediately doubles the cost-per-job for any jobs that might be created. I have

yet to see an Obama proposal where, using even his grossly inflated jobs numbers, the real cost to

create the jobs was below $100K/year per job.

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