Kevin A. Hassett recently compared the economic stimulus to a very expensive box of chocolates. "You get a sugar high, and a caffeine rush, but when the chocolates are gone, you have nothing but fat to show for it. You are worse off than you were before and still need to find real nutrition." AEI economists agree that the stimulus was poorly designed and targeted, and we are just beginning to realize how costly the misguided effort has been for our country in the short and long term, especially the unnecessarily large increase in the national debt. The administration claims it created 2 million jobs last year, which means that we spent about $100,000 on each job. Hassett notes that we could have "used the stimulus to hire individuals at the going median wage of $37,115, [and] created more than 23 million new jobs." There are better ways, he notes, and we need to address them now. As John H. Makin points out in his latest AEI Economic Outlook, "A substantial risk has emerged of negative growth in the second or third quarter of 2010."

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