In a speech in Henderson [no relation], Nevada on July 30, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance stated, “We believe that a million cheap, knockoff toasters aren’t worth the price of a single American manufacturing job.”
Let’s see. With a quick on-line search, I found that the cheapest toaster and, sure enough, it’s imported, is this one for $14.66 before tax. So one million toasters would fetch $14.6 million. This means that Vance thinks one manufacturing job per year is worth at least $14.6 million per year. The reason is that to save that job for a year would mean giving up one million toasters that year and so saving a job for, say, 10 years would mean giving one million toasters a year for 10 years.
When various economists have given estimates of the cost of saving particular jobs, we often come up with numbers ranging from $100,000 to $1 million per job per year. We often don’t bother to argue that a job that pays, say, $50,000 a year isn’t worth saving if the cost is $500,000. We tend to think it’s obvious. But then we don’t tend to run into people as innumerate, or as uncaring, as J.D. Vance.
Why uncaring? Who does Vance think would do without the $14.66 toaster? The person in Pebble Beach or Beverly Hills? No. It’s much more likely to be the person in Watts or Modesto.
I’ve got a new motto for the Trump campaign that fits the Vance idea more closely than MAGA. It’s MTLA. Make Toasters Less Affordable.
Great analysis, and it's fun to know actual numbers.
It's probably not worth the exercise, given the source, but if we wanted to steel-man Vance's argument , shouldn't we assume he meant it was the difference between a cheap imported toaster and a more costly domestic toaster, times one million, that is not worth giving up a job? To make the math easy, let's assume the domestic toaster is $1 more expensive. That would be $1 million, given his own number. Still doesn't sound worth it.
I also don't accept that we give up jobs to buy cheap toasters. That's not how economies work. But I assume you wanted to focus on the pure innumeracy of the statement.