Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[Jester]

I don't see employers running headlong into lowering salaries.

This is key. If wages are not going to drop by a lot, then very few jobs will be created. If, conversely, lots of jobs are created, then they're not going to pay very much. Jobs that pay $10,000 a year for full-time work are not going to go a long way towards eliminating poverty.

I really don't think you're going to solve a credit crisis-induced unemployment explosion by opening up a raft of low-end jobs at 4 or 5 bucks an hour. No doubt you'd get some boost out of it, but most of the unemployed are used to working for a hell of a lot more than that.

Training is always a good thing, but it's a longer term advantage, not a short term solution. You can't retrain people for jobs that no longer exist, and if your big plan for making new jobs is innovation (which takes time, and no guarantees of success) and lowering the minimum wage (which creates jobs that require neither education nor training), then you'd largely just be creating human capital that people cannot put to good use. I'm all for it anyway, but it's not going to put millions of people back to work in the near future.

-Jester