Topix Staff Story
In his rebuttal of Obama’s State of the Union speech, Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels joked that
The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more [jobs] than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew.
Daniels’ joke suggests that the most successful entrepreneurs – like Jobs – create way more jobs than government spending.
But Daniels is wrong, writes Paul Krugman in his popular New York Times column – the vast majority of Apple employees are Chinese, not American. And Obama’s auto bailout created more American jobs than Jobs ever did.
Daniels’ mistake, says Krugman, stems from a fundamental error. The Republican vision of a “job creator” is the lone genius entrepreneur, like Steve Jobs. But you can’t rely on lone entrepreneurs for job creation, Krugman writes. Jobs emerge from “business ecologies” – clusters of businesses who buy from or supply one another, like the auto industry. That makes it worthwhile bailing out a few businesses to save an entire “business ecology.”
Do you agree - can government bailouts create jobs?