Quite sane, in fact.
1. By your logic, the city should have imploded the Book-Cadillac, since that cost about $1 million per full-time-equivalent permanent job, correct?
2. Even accepting that your $56,000 figure is properly viewed as a subsidy solely to job creation [[as opposed to making up the gap from building on top of a brownfield), it's a small amount compared to what southern states pay for auto jobs at plants built on greenfields [[unskilled at about $14/hour). Their average subsidy was [[and likely still is) about $165,000 per job.
3. If you consider the city income taxes generated, even a small lift to property values, attraction of additional high-income people to an area with more "normal" retail, and increased throughput to local vendors, it is very easy to get $56,000 worth of value from each of those positions.
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