Politicians base these subsidies on the "velocity of the dollar" theory - that every dollar paid out to employees and put back into the local economy generates some multiplier of economic activity. Conventional wisdom says it's 1:10 - for every $1 spent in the local economy $10 of economic activity gets created. That's how they justify these huge subsidies for relatively small numbers of jobs created - the idea is that the $10 million in wages will blow up to $100 million in overall regional profits.

Problem is, most economists think the actual number is between $0 and $8, depending on what people spend their money on [[buying bread from a local bakery is closer to $8, buying a video game from Amazon is closer to zero). For reference, Obama's stimulus "success" calculations were based on $18 per dollar spent - which is optimistic to say the least.