Government resources should be spent carefully  

Just Another Rice Grad (no permalinks, I guess) is duking it out with PG over PG's idea that the govt should offer tax breaks to businesses during recessions in an exchange for an agreement to hire new employees.

In principle I don't have a problem with the government subsidizing employment, but it seems like there are other ways of achieving the same result. Give the money to the states, they're laying off employees right and left. Hire some teachers. There's so much work to be done in this world, and paying corporations to keep the dead wood around is a waste of valuable human resources! This might seem unfair because of the way it moves jobs from one industry to another (ie lay off codemonkeys, hire teachers), but that's pretty much standard fare... Look at the way the Fed's tried to combat the recession - pushing down interest rates didn't help people who were laid off during the recession, but it sure created a boom in the housing market. A truly visionary policy would reallocate the abundant resource in order to achieve some neglected social good.