The powers that be–those that give a damn about creating jobs at all (Obama’s campaign manager doesn’t)–have a bunch of tired plans for creating jobs in America: get rid of labor unions, repeal healthcare reform, cut the safety net, create green jobs (to compete against China, which has had a huge head start), improve education, reduce the deficit, persecute undocumented workers.
According to Gallup, those proposals are supported by, respectively, 1%, 1%, 1%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 5% of people recently asked an open ended question as to the best way to create jobs in the US. (h/t Gotta Laff)
The leading suggestion–one rarely talked about these days by the smart people in DC–is simply to stop shipping jobs overseas. 25% of people polled said we should just keep our manufacturing jobs here.
Mind you, this guy used to talk about ways to stop shipping jobs overseas. But that’s before he put one of the guys who has shipped the most jobs overseas in charge of job creation. And hired someone who doesn’t much care about job creation to run his reelection campaign. And committed to a NAFTA-style trade agreement with Korea.
But a solid quarter of this country still thinks the best way to create jobs is to make sure they keep the jobs they have. What a novel thought.