A story on the International Business Times website (http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/63228/20100917/american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-arra-los-angeles-stimulus-wendy-greuel.htm”) shows what a disaster the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been and why big Government has to go.

The article reports that Los Angeles received $111 million dollars in stimulus money with which they were able to create a grand total of 55 jobs.  Doing the math, $111,000,000 / 55 = 2,018,181, shows that the American taxpayers just paid over 2 million dollars per job in Los Angeles.  This is just unacceptable!

Even the city controller, Wendy Greuel, is not happy with this.  She says, “With our local unemployment rate over 12% we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work.”  How nice of her to acknowledge this.

The Governments goal was to create 264 jobs with the money.  Doing another calculation, 111,000,000 / 264 = 420,454, shows a cost of over four hundred thousand dollars per job.  Even this seems crazy when you figure the average job probably pays about 50k and with benefits and overhead costs a company about $100K to maintain for a year.  Where is the other $300K going?

This is just another example of the total incompetence of Government.  The country would have been much better off if the money that was wasted on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stayed in the hands of the taxpayers that earned it.