(though even high growth sometimes manifests itself in higher productivity, which technically keeps employment from rising). In a system with so many variables, it's impossible to say "tax cuts failed in 2001 and 2002 to create jobs." In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing crises of confidence around the world, economic growth suffered. It's also a non sequitur to suggest somehow that we had tax cuts in 2009 under Obama's stimulus, and those cuts failed to produce jobs. We had no such thing -- at least not the types of tax cuts that have anything to do with real growth. The stimulus was mainly spending to prop up profligate states and transfer payments to lower-income people. If you want to conclude that those things did nothing to increase employment, I'll agree. Progressives criticize tax cuts by default because they tend to reduce revenues initially and crimp federal spending. In that federal spending mainly displaces growth and jobs in the private sector, you shouldn't be so eager to write off a general strategy of "starving" the government beast. And Matt Welch, in the words of a "competing" interpreter of political events, sounds like a completely partisan douche bag in this piece. Which of course, in this case, is a sign of naked opportunism rather than an expression of ideological belief. I don't see much of a leftist or progressive tilt to the Obama administration. They've picked up almost right where the Republicans left off. It's a third Bush