Hi clo,
Wholly appropriate. Of course cutting taxes does not directly create jobs! The theory is that putting money in people's pockets will stimulate entrepreneurialism, but this is at best an indirect response.
This may be true sometimes, but it depends upon the economic environment.
In the recent environment, the problem has not been that there was no cash to invest. Most large companies have had plenty of cash, for instance. It is that sitting on cash is appealing when interest rates are very low or even negative. Whereas hiring people and starting a business is always risky.
The Republicans for some reason decided that cutting taxes will always yield jobs. Far as I know, this is nonsense from an economic perspective. But they have done so anyway, which is why people think there's a second reason for their actions, which is to reward the wealthy who also happen to be their supporters. At any rate, where they can cut taxes and fire government employees, they have. With the result that Republican states are typically worse off in terms of unemployment.
So the Republican idea that cutting taxes always yields jobs is found wanting.
At times like those we have seen recently, government is usually the entity which is most capable of creating jobs. They can undertake the sort of projects that return a long run value, such as building power stations, new train networks and things like this. So you pay for the project now (debt and interest) and they yield a return over the long run (asset and income) - they plan that the project will break even or make a profit by the time the project winds up. A good example is the Hoover dam. The other good thing is that people with an income consume products and services and they don't add unemployment expense to the economy.
As a recovery takes hold, the private sector will tend to do the heavy lifting. So if this recovery has legs, we should see everyone doing better, jobswise. But if the recovery stalls, then the only hope for new jobs is from the government. Otherwise, we're going to see an excruciating period of high unemployment.
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