Consider, for a moment, a tale of two countries: the United States, where stocks are up, G.D.P. is rising, but the terrible employment situation just keeps getting worse; and Germany, which took a hit to its G.D.P. when world trade collapsed, but has been remarkably successful at avoiding mass job losses. Here in America, we don’t really have a jobs policy: we have a G.D.P. policy -- that by stimulating overall spending we can make G.D.P. grow faster, and this will induce companies to stop firing and resume hiring. The alternative would be policies that address the job issue more directly [like] New-Deal-style employment programs -- perhaps politically impossible now. Alternatively, or in addition, we could have policies that support private-sector employment. And that’s what the Germans have done. Since [a large enough conventional stimulus] doesn’t seem to be in the cards, we need to talk about cheaper alternatives that address the job problem directly: an employment tax credit; the German-style job-sharing subsidy. The point is that we need to start doing something more than, and different from, what we’re already doing. And the experience of other countries suggests that it’s time for a policy that explicitly and directly targets job creation.