The infamous stimulus package, President Obama’s shining beacon on the Hill, negotiated behind closed doors, its turgid pages crackling with pet projects dreamed up by upstanding Democrats, will be sent to the White House. This monstrosity has been created to put Americans back to work. If I understand it correctly, there will be new jobs in the biotechnology, transportation, health, environmental and information technology sectors. While some of these jobs will be private and corporate, I suspect government too will expand and create millions of redundant jobs to prevent a social revolution in America.
Whether the economy can be resuscitated will depend entirely on the quality of the jobs created. If these are jobs where people can only eke out a living, consumers will neither have the confidence nor the temerity to rush out and buy as recklessly as they did in the past. Moreover, hard times have thrown many people deep into debt. Part of the income from the new jobs will be spent paying down credit card debt. Much of it will go into necessities. Families that have spent all their savings to survive will have to build new nest eggs to make big purchases like cars and homes.
