I Don't Think the Stimulus is Working

[Wry Catcher]

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

Complete and utter poppycock. Most small business are either sole proprieterships or partnerships that are taxed at individual tax rates.

Obama allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire will cause these small businesses to pay income taxes at higher rates than do Mega Corps. The highest Corporate tax rate is 35%. Small businesses will pay 39.6% plus an additional 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge once that kicks in.

So you say. Others say targeted tax cuts will continue for small business, and the higher income tax reflects higher income.

 

[Rozman]

"Obama allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire will cause these small businesses to pay income taxes at higher rates than do Mega Corps. The highest Corporate tax rate is 35%. Small businesses will pay 39.6% plus an additional 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge once that kicks in....."

How about when the Cap and tax kicks in and businesses will be paying more for energy.....Don't you just love the dems plan to destroy whatever companies may be left.

 

[Meister]

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

Complete and utter poppycock. Most small business are either sole proprieterships or partnerships that are taxed at individual tax rates.

Obama allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire will cause these small businesses to pay income taxes at higher rates than do Mega Corps. The highest Corporate tax rate is 35%. Small businesses will pay 39.6% plus an additional 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge once that kicks in.

So you say. Others say targeted tax cuts will continue for small business, and the higher income tax reflects higher income.

so you say.

 

[Wry Catcher]

On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:

Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:

Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.

I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Were you employed and selling stuff in the mid 90's? That's what a recovery feels like.

This is no recovery. This is a recession. It's not getting better. It's getting worse. The guy in charge has gotten everything he has sought to lead us to recovery and he is failing.

If there is a recovery, you don't need statistics to tell you it's happening. You will see it in privately funded construction projects, cities and states flush with tax revenues, growing and reinvigorated neighborhoods and politicians crowing about their success in creating jobs that they had nothing to do with.

If there is a failed recovery you will see it in the loss of jobs, houses and storefronts empty, cities and states laying off employees and shutting down programs and politicians feeling our pain and extending unemployment benefits.

By your own observations, is this a recovery or a failed recovery?

By my observations I see shovel ready projects under way (Bay Bridge, East Bay Highway projects, building's going up South of AT&T as a result of federal funding on Bio Research; rebuilding Memorial Stadium (CAL Football) and planning to build out Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard and the Concord Naval Weapons Station with housing, recreation and business parks; new football stadium for the 49ers either at Hunter's Point or in Silicon Valley; a new Grand Central type station for Bus, light and heavy rail, underway in Downtown San Francisco and talk of building large piers where old and rotten ones stand now for the America's Cup sailing competition.
Small business is having problems, the reasons are many but to blame high taxes is dishonest. Local fees, assessments, permits, etc. hurt new and established small business - all of which are deductable as costs of business for federal tax purchases.
I can't speak to health care costs, but, health care is paid for by small business, large business and individuals even without 'Obamacare. Soon more people receive preventative care and be treated earlier for the long term costs of untreated cronic disease (diabetes, for example) and this may reduce costs in time.

 

[Rozman]

One thing about all this is the fact that it may be worse then the right is saying if that is possible...Obama's
tax hike with the end of the Bush tax cuts,the next tax hike with Obama health care,then the Cap and Tax
disaster that is around the corner.

It's 5:30 PM where I live,I think it's time to start drinking.

 

[Foxfyre]

The problem is not in Washington, it's us.

Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money

Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs

Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.

We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.

In my business I deal with mostly small businesses including a lot of contractors.

First a short term project like installing windows in a closed building provides work for at most a few days. The administration can claim 'jobs created' for those few days but you soon have everybody back on the unemployment roles. There is no way anybody will convince me that such government spending stimulates anything more than the deficit and national debt. And they are being counted as 'jobs created' and they shouldn't be.

Is it better than paying unemployment for those few days? Not if the taxpayer doesn't get full value for the dollars spent.

So according to your own link here:
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
the red tape, required environmental studies etc., per usual mean that government contracts will see many delays and many didn't happen last year or this year and will finally be implemented in subsequent years and the blame for that is squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government.

So back to those small businesses, they're telling me they aren't going to get ambitious about much of anything until they know what the tax consequences will be next year and beyond or what the healthcare mandates will do to them, etc. etc. etc. The government keeps moving the markers from week to week and that isn't anybody but the government's fault either.

You don't roll the dice if you don't know what the payoff is going to be. And you sure don't roll the dice if it means you have to pay even more than what you are prepared to gamble.

Note the bold
I don't see that in my link; that's your speculation. Please refrain from doing that without informing us.

My point was clear; you can't judge the effects of the stimulus bill until all of the money has been spent. For Sen. Bob Corker, or any other republican politician, to tell us that the stimulus bill will fail, meanwhile, their states are hardly spending any of the money given to them, is misrepresenting the facts.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2008/jan/30/corker-slams-economic-stimulus-bill-again/?print

Simple question: How can you say that this Stimulus bill had failed when the states refuse to spend the money? Food for thought

You're right that it wasn't literally in your link and I should have specified that. I apologize that I didn't.

My comments are inferred however from this statement of Sam Isbell that is in your link:

“I kind of expected it,” he said. “If you do very much government contracting whatsoever, there’s a delay.”

Working with our local contractors here, that is code language for 'red tape, environmental studies, etc. etc. etc.'

The states are not spending the money because they are not required to spend the money in order to get it. That is the fault of the Administration distributing it. The states are required to balance their budgets, however, and will be banking a lot of the stimulus money to do just that to avoid having to eliminate more programs and state jobs.

The fact is, there isn't a hell of a lot of evidence that spending the money is doing much to create jobs either as is already being illustrated here.

It is not much different than the states complaining about the Federal government not funding a mandated No Child Left Behind Act of the previous administration. However, in audit after audit, state after state had not spent many hundreds of thousands of education dollars that had been allocated to them.

We get far better results and are far more likely to achieve a strong robust economy by leaving the money in the hands of the taxpayers to begin with and promoting a business friendly regulatory environment.

 

[Charles_Main]

Wonder why the stimulus package that was supposed to create so many good jobs that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go past 7.5% hasn’t created many good jobs and the unemployment rate continues to be stuck around 9.5%? Meanwhile Europe’s economy continues to boom. Even Germany that normally has high unemployment rates can boast a 7.5% rate this summer.

So what’s wrong?

Well some of the projects the stimulus money has gone for:

A half million dollars for new windows at the Mt. St. Helens visitors center in Amboy, Washington. The building has been closed since 2007 and there are no immediate plans to reopen it

$6.9 million dollars for repairs to an 1846 brick fort marooned on Dry Tortuga at the end the Florida Keys. Few people can visit this remote national park unless they hire a seaplane or take a four-hour round-trip boat ride.

Creating a museum in an abandoned train station in Glasboro, NJ, at the cost of $1.2 million

$2 million dollars to send researchers from the California Academy of Sciences to islands in the Indian Ocean to study exotic ants

A study of dog domestication at Cornell University with a price tag of $296-thousand dollars

$141-thousand dollars to send students from Montana State University to China to study dinosaur eggs

$762-thousand dollars to create interactive choreography programs at the University of North Carolina. Dancers would wear electronic monitors to analyze their movements.

$89-thousand dollars to replace sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma that were just replaced five years ago. One of them goes nowhere near any houses or businesses and leads directly into a ditch.

Source: Republicans: Stimulus Money Spent on Wasteful Projects | Foxnews.com

One analysis I’ve seen that so far what private sector jobs have been created have been at a cost exceeding $300,000 per job.

But Obama and the Dems in Congress refuse to consider using unspent stimulus money to cover costs of extending unemployment insurance which the Republicans have asked for in lieu of increasing the deficit even more.. Instead they accuse the Republicans of blocking extension of unemployment insurance.

Honestly people. Don’t you think we should expect better of our government than this?

If By stimulus you mean Bailing out Failing State Medicare Budgets, and Loading up on a lot of Temporary Union Construction jobs that are over when the "Shovel Ready" Job is done, And Terribly Anemic Private sector Job Growth. Then I guess you could say it was working.

But is it doing what we were told it would do?

Hell no. Was it a good way to spend 850 Billion dollars, Hell no, Not if your Goal was stimulating Job Growth. We were promised unemployment under 8%, It is 9.5%. We were told we would be creating 500,000 Jobs a month by this summer. We lost jobs Last month if you count Government Jobs lost, and after the Revision of Junes numbers added only 30,000 Private sector Jobs in the month of June. 71,000 This month while 145,000 Government jobs were lost.

Nobody being honest about it can conclude anything other than this stimulus was Wholly ineffective, and a terribly inefficient attempt at Stimulus. Period.

Which Oddly enough is EXACTLY what People on the right said it would be. You do not simulate the economy with tiny Tax cuts to most people, and A bunch of Government jobs, and Bail outs for Medicare. You might be able to argue that the money was needed for those things too, but you can NOT claim it was the most effective way to stimulate job Growth.

 

[Avorysuds]

Wonder why the stimulus package that was supposed to create so many good jobs that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go past 7.5% hasn’t created many good jobs and the unemployment rate continues to be stuck around 9.5%? Meanwhile Europe’s economy continues to boom. Even Germany that normally has high unemployment rates can boast a 7.5% rate this summer.

So what’s wrong?

Well some of the projects the stimulus money has gone for:

A half million dollars for new windows at the Mt. St. Helens visitors center in Amboy, Washington. The building has been closed since 2007 and there are no immediate plans to reopen it

$6.9 million dollars for repairs to an 1846 brick fort marooned on Dry Tortuga at the end the Florida Keys. Few people can visit this remote national park unless they hire a seaplane or take a four-hour round-trip boat ride.

Creating a museum in an abandoned train station in Glasboro, NJ, at the cost of $1.2 million

$2 million dollars to send researchers from the California Academy of Sciences to islands in the Indian Ocean to study exotic ants

A study of dog domestication at Cornell University with a price tag of $296-thousand dollars

$141-thousand dollars to send students from Montana State University to China to study dinosaur eggs

$762-thousand dollars to create interactive choreography programs at the University of North Carolina. Dancers would wear electronic monitors to analyze their movements.

$89-thousand dollars to replace sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma that were just replaced five years ago. One of them goes nowhere near any houses or businesses and leads directly into a ditch.

Source: Republicans: Stimulus Money Spent on Wasteful Projects | Foxnews.com

One analysis I’ve seen that so far what private sector jobs have been created have been at a cost exceeding $300,000 per job.

But Obama and the Dems in Congress refuse to consider using unspent stimulus money to cover costs of extending unemployment insurance which the Republicans have asked for in lieu of increasing the deficit even more.. Instead they accuse the Republicans of blocking extension of unemployment insurance.

Honestly people. Don’t you think we should expect better of our government than this?

The problem is not in Washington, it's us.

Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money

Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs
Business News from TheStreet.com

Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

fact- the republican party is derailing the path to create new jobs by filibusting a bill that will provide tax cuts to small businesses.
President Obama to Propose New Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Cut | The White House

I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.

We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.

HA HA HA HA!!! And there is is! I called it! IT'S THE PEOPLE'S FAULT!!!

Obama, the only man on the planet that can DO NO WORNG!

 

[Avorysuds]

Amazing how these kind loving liberals will spend their children and grandchildren into poverty.

Damn right, Bush and the neo-conservatives spent our children into poverty with unnecessary war but had the foresight to at least kill off 5,000 or so of them so they wouldn't have to live in poverty.
And hell, those who lost legs and arms and vision were likely to be poor anyway.

And Obama was there to expand both the wars and look at a possible new one. Conservatives by the end of Bush’s president mostly hated him, he had very little support for a reason. He lied and ran the country into the ground, now Obama continues many of the same policies only in many cases more extreme.

Neocon = Religious Liberal.

 

[saveliberty]

The government created projects, not jobs. The Census is a project. Road construction is a project. Certainly not a long term job. Small businesses don't create jobs unless uncertainty in the market is minimized. Consumers are not confident, banks don't loan much and government policy on health care and taxes looks troublesome.

Now the dimwit Obama comes along and preaches wine and roses, when we all know better. The minions run about blaming every one but the one who should have been leading us the last year and a half.

 

[code1211]

Amazing how these kind loving liberals will spend their children and grandchildren into poverty.

Damn right, Bush and the neo-conservatives spent our children into poverty with unnecessary war but had the foresight to at least kill off 5,000 or so of them so they wouldn't have to live in poverty.
And hell, those who lost legs and arms and vision were likely to be poor anyway.

And Obama was there to expand both the wars and look at a possible new one. Conservatives by the end of Bush’s president mostly hated him, he had very little support for a reason. He lied and ran the country into the ground, now Obama continues many of the same policies only in many cases more extreme.

Neocon = Religious Liberal.

The reason that Bush lost support among Conservatives is that Bush is NOT a Conservative.

Bush is a free spending Liberal who never saw a budget he couldn't bust.

The Big 0, on the other hand, clearly never saw a budget. Period. He just spends like there's no tomorrow.

A 1.5 TRILLION dollare deficite???!!??!!

The upcoming deficites only get bigger. He's killing the Golden Goose and running up the tab. What a putz.

 

[Samson]

Damn right, Bush and the neo-conservatives spent our children into poverty with unnecessary war but had the foresight to at least kill off 5,000 or so of them so they wouldn't have to live in poverty.
And hell, those who lost legs and arms and vision were likely to be poor anyway.

And Obama was there to expand both the wars and look at a possible new one. Conservatives by the end of Bush’s president mostly hated him, he had very little support for a reason. He lied and ran the country into the ground, now Obama continues many of the same policies only in many cases more extreme.

Neocon = Religious Liberal.

The reason that Bush lost support among Conservatives is that Bush is NOT a Conservative.

Bush is a free spending Liberal who never saw a budget he couldn't bust.

The Big 0, on the other hand, clearly never saw a budget. Period. He just spends like there's no tomorrow.

A 1.5 TRILLION dollare deficite???!!??!!

The upcoming deficites only get bigger. He's killing the Golden Goose and running up the tab. What a putz.

You are incorrect.

Congress spends money.

Democrats Control Congress.

 

[rightwinger]

The government created projects, not jobs. The Census is a project. Road construction is a project. Certainly not a long term job. Small businesses don't create jobs unless uncertainty in the market is minimized. Consumers are not confident, banks don't loan much and government policy on health care and taxes looks troublesome.

Now the dimwit Obama comes along and preaches wine and roses, when we all know better. The minions run about blaming every one but the one who should have been leading us the last year and a half.

Jobs are jobs. Some are short term, some last a lifetime....they are still jobs

Census jobs are available every 10 years, always have been
Construction jobs are, by their nature, short term. When the project is over, you have to find new work. It has always been that way in Construction

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Obama and the Dem Congress are doing all they can to transform America into the biggest Socialist/Marxist/Fascist failure the planet has ever seen.

They're proud of it too and they are outside of the American mainstream so they will be voted out in November.

We have to hold the Republican feet to the fire for all time, no more Bushes no more Delays running things

 

[MaggieMae]

Wonder why the stimulus package that was supposed to create so many good jobs that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go past 7.5% hasn’t created many good jobs and the unemployment rate continues to be stuck around 9.5%? Meanwhile Europe’s economy continues to boom. Even Germany that normally has high unemployment rates can boast a 7.5% rate this summer.

So what’s wrong?

Well some of the projects the stimulus money has gone for:

A half million dollars for new windows at the Mt. St. Helens visitors center in Amboy, Washington. The building has been closed since 2007 and there are no immediate plans to reopen it

$6.9 million dollars for repairs to an 1846 brick fort marooned on Dry Tortuga at the end the Florida Keys. Few people can visit this remote national park unless they hire a seaplane or take a four-hour round-trip boat ride.

Creating a museum in an abandoned train station in Glasboro, NJ, at the cost of $1.2 million

$2 million dollars to send researchers from the California Academy of Sciences to islands in the Indian Ocean to study exotic ants

A study of dog domestication at Cornell University with a price tag of $296-thousand dollars

$141-thousand dollars to send students from Montana State University to China to study dinosaur eggs

$762-thousand dollars to create interactive choreography programs at the University of North Carolina. Dancers would wear electronic monitors to analyze their movements.

$89-thousand dollars to replace sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma that were just replaced five years ago. One of them goes nowhere near any houses or businesses and leads directly into a ditch.

Source: Republicans: Stimulus Money Spent on Wasteful Projects | Foxnews.com

One analysis I’ve seen that so far what private sector jobs have been created have been at a cost exceeding $300,000 per job.

But Obama and the Dems in Congress refuse to consider using unspent stimulus money to cover costs of extending unemployment insurance which the Republicans have asked for in lieu of increasing the deficit even more.. Instead they accuse the Republicans of blocking extension of unemployment insurance.

Honestly people. Don’t you think we should expect better of our government than this?

What I wonder is why the governors of those states didn't properly allocate grant money that came from the Stimulus Bill? Perhaps the Obama Team should have picked the projects and not trusted the states to pick their projects. Ya think?

 

[MaggieMae]

I saw the President the other day patting himself on the back (again) for saving the USA from the brink.He's going on and on about what a great job he's done turning the economy around and for seven straight months we have had positive numbers on jobs created.Ed Schultz of MSNBC the All positive All Obama news network says the President has turned the economy around.

Why does it seem that we are not a lot better off....
One answer may be....

WE ARE NOT MUCH BETTER OFF THEN WE WERE TWO YEARS AGO ! ! !

That's not even spin, it's a lie. What Obama SAID was that the economy is NOT turning around "fast enough," IN SPITE OF the stimulus, Wall Street gains, etc. But you go right ahead. People tend to listen to you and your ilk anyway because they feel smug in believing that there's only one person to blame--and it certainly ain't themselves.

 

[MaggieMae]

Even though my gut tells me to be wary and all the warning signs are there, I don't want to believe CrusaderFrank.

And Rozman, I not only believe we are no better off than two years ago, I emphatically believe that we are much worse off because we are spending ourselves into bankruptcy while installing legislation that will ensure that no recovery from that will ever be possible.

But when you see the kinds of nonsensical ways the stimulus money is being spent and that almost none of it has gone for the kinds of jobs that actually stimulate the economy, it is maddening.

Whatever happened to all that critical infrastructure that was supposed to be addressed? There aren't fossils in America that could be studied so at least the money would be spent here?

And why isn't even the Political Class outraged at the absurdity of all this given the devastating effects it is having and will have?

Why why why...why don't you people pay attention? This chart shows exactly how much stimulus money was designated per agency, and how much is left. On other pages, the website allows you to click on any state and it will bring up stimulus money used or in process of being used, BY PROJECT IN THAT STATE.

Stimulus:How Fast We're Spending Nearly $800 Billion | ProPublica

All you did, Fox, was cherry pick a few PROJECTS that can be considered boondoggles in an attempt to make your point. Try being an honest pol for a change, would ya?

In my state, crews have been working all summer on a dangerous stretch of U.S. Route 7, which winds through my small town, South to a larger town, and which 18-wheelers roll through on a patched two-lane highway for 30 miles. Am I sick of the stop and go because of widening of the stretch to four lanes through my town? You bet. But it is FINALLY getting done, thanks to the stimulus money, and has put over 100 local people to work for the entire summer and probably unto the fall, not to mention the private contractors employing heavy equipment operators on the construction itself.

Why don't we hear more success stories like that? Because it would be politically incorrect for anyone on the RIGHT to even acknowledge success stories, that's why.

 

[MaggieMae]

It's even higher then that. Count all of the folks working part-time instead of full-time then it goes even higher.

Hate to break it to you, but hiring part-timers won't change, even as the economy picks up and jobs become available. The private sector has discovered that they can pay people less and demand more productivity because of the general fear of losing a job (any job). A full-time job with benefits will be nonexistent in a couple of years.

And apparently there's a lot of people who have held onto their downsized jobs that intend to quit and look for new jobs once the economy gets better. According to a Harris Interactive poll, 48% of those who plan to job hunt are mainly motivated by a lack of trust in their current employers. Gee, I wonder why.

 

[MaggieMae]

"But Obama and the Dems in Congress refuse to consider using unspent stimulus money to cover costs of extending unemployment insurance which the Republicans have asked for in lieu of increasing the deficit even more.. Instead they accuse the Republicans of blocking extension of unemployment insurance."

Yes and isn't that just the corker?? The Left is out there condemning Republicans as the party of no, and leaving out that they wanted those extensions paid for, from existing stimulus monies, rather than what is left of the poor taxpayer's paychecks. No personal accountability at all. The Dims are desperate. They are lying, race-baiting and still of course, blaming Bush. It is all they do and all they have.....

There's still a possibility that something other than the tax benefits still being saved in the stimulus fund will be used elsewhere. But unemployment compensation? That's an entirely different program, one that has existed for decades, and it is set up as INSURANCE for an EMERGENCY, just as its name implies. In order to cover the extension, should we tap into Social Security funds? Transportation funds? Like it or not, the Stimulus Fund Bill was a separate, one-time shot, and to take funds from some other agency's purpose would simply mean that "stimulus" could potentially be never-ending. Is THAT what you want?

 

[MaggieMae]

But consider, most of those projects spent funds on goods and services, and isn't that stimulating the economy?

No. It's simply redistributing money from one place to another. If we had a stimulated economy we wouldn't have unemployment in the teens.

If people are working, regardless if it's a temporary government job, they have more money to spend and put into circulation which is what boosts the economy. What part of that don't you get? **

The reason more and more people are getting laid off is because more and more businesses are failing because they can't sustain themselves without CREDIT, which comes from the major investment banks on down to local community banks. The reason the past month's unemployment numbers rose was because the Census workers were put back into the unemployment column.

** Case in point: There's more road construction going on north of where I live, and I have two friends in that area who have found jobs working on the "roach coaches" which provide food and drink to the construction workers. Let's see, as an extension of that project, that's at least 6 non-construction jobs, since 4 people own the food wagon and they had to hire 2 extra people this summer. That particular food wagon gypsies around the state all year, going to county fairs, exhibitions at the fair grounds, car auctions, etc., so my 2 friends who were totally inexperienced not only had money to spend this summer, but can now be called upon to fill in as necessary or even work in restaurants as food servers. Not what they want, but JOBS nonetheless.