How many jobs....

....are at stake with the President's plan (and the Democrats in Congress) to repeal Bush's tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 per year?   Is it relevant that "TurboTax" Tim Geithner says that only 2% of small business owners would be impacted?

Well, let's take a look at this.  There are about 29 million small businesses in the U.S., and our favorite guy who can't figure out Schedule SE would suggest it is "only" 600,000 of them who would be affected.  Along the same lines, it's said that the planned tax hike for the prosperous few would raise about seventy billion dollars per year.

If we then consider that it takes about $40,000 to employ someone (even at the entry level--think benefits), this would indicate that this tax hike for the rich could cost close to two million jobs--if your employer has no money, you have no job.  In the same way, 4% of 250,000 is about $10,000.....a good chunk of a minimum wage worker's job, suggesting about 500,000 could lose their jobs due to this.  Along the same lines, Roosevelt's tax hikes back in 1937 cost millions their jobs as well.

Now of course not every job costs exactly $40k, and government spending can generate jobs as well.  However, reality is that when government spends for things that are not truly "public goods" a la Adam Smith, people are put out of work. 

Maybe it's time to reconsider the populist idea that one's boss is an economic "opponent" a la Marx, and maybe it's time to consider the idea that if the guy who owns the place where you work doesn't have any money, you won't have a job very long.