Try a different way to create more jobs

Henry Schmid, Las Vegas

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 | 2:04 a.m.

As reported Saturday, the Nevada unemployment rate is 13.7 percent and one in five workers are either unemployed, underemployed or have given up seeking a job. After a year and half of fiscal stimulus, this shows that the administration’s plan for recovery is not working.

Instead of government spending, which mostly does not provide sustained employment and drives up the deficit, a better plan would be a reduction of taxes. Consumers would have more money to spend, resulting in more jobs.

This would allow businesses to reduce their costs, resulting in more domestic and overseas sales, or expand, both resulting in more jobs. Continuing on with a policy that does not work is the definition of insanity and is resulting in a real hardship for the unemployed.

Another area that needs to be emphasized is the retraining of the long-term unemployed. Many jobs will not return because of increased productivity resulting from the recession. Two demanding areas for retraining are in medicine and education.

With 31 million additional people to be insured, the need for physician assistants, nurse practitioners and office staff will be large. Teaching assistants and tutors would greatly improve our schools, and a better-educated population is required for economic growth and to compete in world markets.

The Obama administration needs to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of the recovery policies and make necessary changes.