(Last week, I invited people who have been commenting on Opening Arguments to participate in a little reverse blogging. E-mail me something, I offered, and I'll consider putting it up, then I can comment on your post for a change. Mike Sylvester is the first one to take me up on it. Following is his post.)
Major Moves is an interesting bill that has drawn a lot of partisan politics. I have not had time to read the complete bill, nor have I had the time to “crunch the numbers” and make an intelligent decision about the entire proposal.
Republicans and Democrats are tossing around statistics that 100% contradict each other. I can tell you one thing for sure; no taxpayer should even consider believing the statistics that either side is putting out.
There is one statistic that I have decided to investigate. INDOT, Mitch Daniels and the Republicans are claiming that the toll-road lease will create 130,000 jobs. That is a bald-faced lie that anyone with a calculator can discount in about 30 seconds. Do they think we are stupid? If claims like this go unchallenged; we need to retrain all Hoosiers in mathematics.
Please get out a calculator, and let's “crunch the numbers!”
Let's assume that the Indiana government gets $3.85 billion for the 75-year lease, and that all of this money is immediately spent to create jobs.
Next let's assume that 100% of the $3.85 billion will immediately go to pay construction workers.
If you divide $3.85 billion by 130,000 workers, then you get $29,615 dollars per construction worker. This would pay 130,000 construction workers for about five months (Not 75 years). This is assuming that there is no government waste, no fraud, no theft, no corporate profits, no managers, no supervisors and no accountantsand that none of the money is siphoned off by the government or politicians, no lawyers are involved, etc. This does not leave room to purchase any construction materials. Using this scenario, the money would all be spent in about five months.
Republicans should be embarrassed to be quoting these false statistics. Heck, if these construction projects really create 130,000 jobs, let's look at the effect it would have on Indiana's unemployment rate for about five months. According to the Department of Labor Indiana had 153,900 unemployed workers and an unemployment rate of 4.7% in January of this year. If 130,000 construction jobs were created and filled by Hoosiers. our unemployment rate would immediately drop to .7%. Who thinks that will happen?
If you believe that Major Moves will create 130,000 new jobs, please contact me immediately. I have some land that I own in Iraq that you can buy cheap. This land will make you a millionaire in just a few months. It is a great long term investment and there is absolutely no risk to you. Please shoot me an email at Mike.Sylvester@Verizon.net.
Mike Sylvester
Chairman of the Libertarian Party of
Allen
County
