White House to George Will: there's nothing we can do to create jobs

[Enrique]

Will said this morning on ABC News "This Week" that he had lunch or something with Austan Goolsbee, who complained that everyone thinks there's a lever in the basement that they can just pull and create jobs*, where in reality there's nothing they can do. Oh, well, I guess they better just concentrate on increasing corporate profits then, right?


*really? Who thinks that?

[ananda]

1. It's that can't do attitude that makes America so great!

... for the rich.

[ProSense]

2. George Will is a reliable source

right?

Here is Austan Goolsbee on This Week (Jan. 2):

<...>

WHEN ASKED HOW TO GIVE THE ECONOMY A PUSH IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, GOOLSBEE SAID: "I think the focus has got to be on investment, on exports, and on innovation. And that's...rather than on excessive consumption and housing investment, as it was in the last boom. And I think the president's firmly in that...planted in that camp, and we're going to grow our way out of this."

<...>

[dkf]

4. Thats the structural change we need for future growth

But what grows jobs now?

[ProSense]

5. So "investment"

is only about the future?

[dkf]

7. One thing Obama learned its that there are no shovel ready projects

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

8. Georgie boy is a douche.

[HeroTwins]

3. so, now you get your gossip from George Will? aaahahahahhahhahahahahaaaaa!!!

[OHdem10]

6. If you are Right Winger, you just believe --sit around and wait

until Business decide what they will do. Only
Business can create jobs. This is Conservative
thought.

We need to get this set of facts out.

The Republicans yip constantly--"The Stimulus did
not work.......we did not go to the 8% employment---
it did not work.

Here is the truth which has never been put out there.

The Stimulus (small as it was because of Conservatives
Repubs amd Dems) did work. It stabilized the economy
and we have been in a weaker recovery for 20 months.

HAD OBAMA BEEN GIVEN the Stimulus in the amount requested
by Geithner, Romer and Summers, we would be a lot further
ahead than we are now. The Conservatives cut the Size (Amount)_
of the Stimulus and then scream because we did not go to
8% Employment Rate. Keynesian Economics saved this country
the second time. It is too d---m bad the Conservatives
interefered with what might have beeen.

I hope Obama remembers this and does not get trapped into
the RW Policies which will only make things worse for the
economy. It was those FREE Market Principles that took us
into the Abyss.

[Recursion]

9. Who thinks that

People who are angry that there isn't a second WPA right now sometimes sound like they think that would drive down the unemployment to near 0 within months (despite the fact that the original one never got unemployment below 15%).

[StarsInHerHair]

11. so the past chains us absolutely? I very much disagree, undo Reagan's bs

'law' forbidding the Federal Gov from creating another WPA, we have interstate highways now, communications systems that we didn't have in the 1930s. I'm weary of hearing from another "cant". Just because you don't think so doesn't make that fact. Just repairing and upgrading our infrastructure would employ quite a few, and make America much better off.
http://blogs.america.gov/obama/2010/10/12/president-obama-wants-to-fix-u-s-infrastructure/
http://www.gototradeschool.com/hoffa-fund-rail-infrastructure-repair-to-create-good-jobs-source-prnewswire-com/employment/
http://franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=531

[boppers]

10. Quote on "nothing we can do"?

I didn't see that sourced in the OP, or quote marks to indicate that was exact wording, or indeed, was said at all.