I both disagree and agree, any that says the government doesn't create jobs is seriously lacking somewhere. The problem is with the jobs that the government creates, I would say that (this is a guess) that 95% of government job produce nothing, (in the way of product) and these jobs must be paid by the taxpayers of this country. Part of the problem with our budget, is government payroll. That is and has been increasing faster then the private sector jobs that are source of the money needed to pay there salaries.
Now can government help produce private sector jobs, yeah I suppose they can, but the question there remains is how much bang for the buck do we get when they try. One in here said that “Government can act like a giant Venture Capitalist, pouring large amounts of money into projects that may produce tangible products. “ The problem with that is, well their successes are touted loudly, just as often, or probably more often they fail. Mostly we don't hear about the failures .. [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Solyndra[/FONT] is in the news because of questions surrounding how stable it was when they were given 500 million dollars. Now how many more loans will have to be made, paid back with interest, to make up for a 500million dollar loss ?
I don't believe our government creates any wealth, they create ideas, and innovation that the private sector can then use to create wealth, but to say the government creates wealth, is a stretch. If they were so good at creating wealth as one here is saying, then how in the hell did we get 15 trillion dollars in debt, and how could they be running at a 1.5 trillion deficit per year??.....By anyone's standard that I know, they would never anything that is 15 trillion dollars, and growing yearly, in debt something that was any good at creating wealth.
The government is basically a service industry, that produces very little in the over all scheme of things in the way of product. Their job is to spend the money they take in. But that single standard they are now, and have been failing for a long time. Much of the services they provide are needed and wanted by most people, but they have become like pigs that think they have a never ending supply of feed, and have grown bloated, under worked and over paid.