President-elect Obama: One trillion jobs created will cost only $3 million, maybe $3.5 million, maybe $4 million.

Wait a minute… was it that much, or was it 3 million jobs will be created for nearly a trillion dollars? Or was it 3 million jobs created “or saved” for nearly a trillion dollars? –Hold on, I am pretty sure last Saturday it became four million jobs created or saved for nearly a trillion dollars.

I am getting a bit confused… The number of jobs that will be created has changed several times but one thing is certain, it has already increased by 33% in just over a week.

" What America needs is productivity. We need jobs that come as a result of free enterprise, free markets and capitalism, not free money. "

I have listened to almost every word publicly spoken from the podium of the office of the President-elect since November. I spend a lot of time talking about the stimulus plan and its effect on the economy on “Happy Hour,” “The Strategy Room” and “Bulls and Bears. ” I have taken extensive notes on what President-elect Obama says when he speaks and I am sure he has changed these numbers several times.

I have noticed something else. The Obama administration has changed the way they describe these jobs.

They have changed the wording from jobs “created” to jobs “created and saved.” This new semantic switcheroonie allows Obama, Rahm and the rest of the crew to count anything better than the recent numbers of job losses as a win for them.

The number of jobs lost in the last several months has been staggering. In 2008 our economy lost 2.6 million jobs that’s the most since the end of World War II! At 524,000 jobs lost in December alone, Obama can use this outlier as his watermark. As the economy comes out of the current recession, job losses will slow. At some point they may even stop and reverse thanks in no part to the Obama stimulus plan or the nearly 1 trillion dollars spent on it. When recessions end, and they all have so far, job losses slow down –That’s just simple Econ 101.

When he outlined his economic stimulus plan in his recent radio address (also seen on YouTube), Obama said, “the No. 1 goal of my plan is to create [Note: no mention of "saving" jobs] 3 million new jobs, more than 80 percent of them in the private sector.”

Since then the job creation number has swelled to four million. If the president-elect is correct, the remaining 20% will be government jobs, or 800,000 jobs! What if the economy turns around and job losses slow? Under the Obama stimulus plan, those government jobs might still total 800,000 and the rest may come from the “saved” jobs. read more