Word: lasting
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...that dynamic in action in Austin, cut diagonally across the street from HomeAway and pop into the headquarters of Whole Foods. For a decade, the upscale grocery chain saw sales grow at about 20% annually. Last year, sales barely budged up 1% - and the 30 stores that executives planned to open around the country were trimmed to 15. Those 15 stores added nearly 4,000 jobs - just half as many as would have been gained had people kept buying organic peppers and salted caramels at the same pace. "There's too much thinking about how to create jobs," says James...
...That prime-the-pump logic is also behind the use of the government to create demand - what we know as stimulus spending. Last year's $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has received its fair share of criticism for funds being dispersed too slowly and for not doing enough to stem unemployment. But in Austin, Bruce Matous has a different point of view. "This saved my family business," says the president of Matous Construction...
...Driving around Hornsby Bend, Matous points to a group of half a dozen workmen and says, "We would have laid off all those guys." The construction industry has been brutalized in Austin, as it has been nationally, and by the end of last year, Matous was looking at just a few more months of work in the pipeline. Then he won the Hornsby Bend contract. Now the company is fielding job applications from people 200 miles away and is creating business for other firms, from the equipment maker Caterpillar to R&R Industries, a California outfit that makes yellow safety...
...Washington Isn't the Answer In Washington, the bulk of the response to job loss has been to drum up short-term demand. Last year's stimulus package kept the economy from spiraling further downward. Current proposals to extend unemployment benefits and send $100 billion to struggling local governments would have a similar effect - allowing consumers and cities to keep on spending...
...from the budget to fund the construction projects, but that is not expected to be enough - and private investors have indicated that they may not be willing to make up the difference during the economic downturn. There are also signs that the initial cost estimates have been way off. Last July, the government said the total construction bill would run about $6.6 billion, but just a couple of months later, it revised that figure to a whopping $34 billion, according to the Russian news service RIA Novosti. Amid concerns that construction is running behind schedule - a problem exacerbated...