Word: programer
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Target an Industry and Stimulate Demand Cash for Clunkers - the program that paid people $4,500 to turn in their old cars and buy new ones - is one of the most demonstrably successful federal efforts at stimulating the economy so far. Over the summer, General Motors and other car companies ramped up production - adding shifts and running plants on overtime - to meet the increase in demand. Now policymakers are talking about Cash for Caulkers, a program that would give homeowners an incentive to better weatherize their houses. The goal would be to create work for a construction industry that still...
Such a targeted type of program has a good shot at doing what it sets out to do. The downside: intervening in the economy in such a precise way is almost by definition not expandable. Cash for Caulkers would give building contractors a boost, but they represent a small slice of the economy. To next help out, say, bakers, policymakers would have to design a brand-new program. Plus, if such a program had an expiration date, we'd feel not just a rise in demand, but a fall later on as well. Car manufacturers and the people who work...
...there are reasons to question how effective and efficient such a program would be. First of all, it is misleading to imply that companies aren't hiring because workers aren't cheap enough. As Dale Mortensen, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, points out, workers are a real bargain right now. Unit labor costs - how much a company has to pay people to produce a unit of whatever it is that the company makes - have been flat or falling for all of 2009. Between the second and third quarters, labor costs dropped at an annual rate...
...There are also differences over how to deal with Iran's nuclear program. Although Turkish diplomats insist that Ankara is opposed to any development of nuclear weapons in neighboring Iran, Erdogan has in recent months strengthened diplomatic and trade ties with Tehran, which is a key gas supplier to Turkey. The Turks abstained last month in a U.N. vote condemning Iran's nuclear activities, despite China and Russia's support for it. Erdogan has also criticized Western leaders for turning a blind eye to Israel, widely seen as the Middle East's only nuclear power - albeit an undeclared one. Turkey...
Morales sailed to victory thanks largely to that indigenous cohort, which is concentrated in Bolivia's Western highlands and makes up about two-thirds of the country's population. Like Hugo Chávez, his left-wing counterpart in Venezuela, Morales has lavished unprecedented social programs on the poor, including free medical care, stipends for new mothers and the elderly, and a massive program for literacy that includes payments to low-income families who make sure their children attend school. "Evo knows what it's like to be like us," said Ilda Condori, an indigenous voter waiting outside a polling...