We need a refresher course in Job Creation 101 to judge how much, if at all, U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed $447 billion program of spending increases and tax cuts might revive America's sputtering job machine.
Recall that the private sector is the main employment engine. Businesses create jobs when two conditions are met. First, extra demand for their products justifies more workers. Second, the extra demand can be satisfied profitably. There are qualifications to these generalizations (startups, for instance), but these are the basics.
As for government, it's less a job creator than a job changer. It supports jobs (soldiers, teachers, scientists) by taxing, borrowing and regulating. If government taxed, borrowed or regulated less, that money would stay with households and businesses, which would spend it on something else and, thereby, create other jobs. Politics determines how much private income we devote to public services.
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