Day before Yesterday, Barack Obama gave his state of the Union address. He tried to assure the people that his administration understood the misery of ordinary people. It is the year of mid-term election in congress and that is why, Obama mainly talked about the issues that American people want to hear most and naturally, American people want jobs now. He did not say that much about foreign policy and he mostly talked about economy.
The biggest challenge for Barack Obama at this moment is that although US economy has more or less come out of the global recession, many people are still suffering from unemployment. There is no sign of any job creation but some people are losing jobs every month. So, the first thing that he has to do is inject some jobs in the economy and it is becoming quite a challenge for him.
It is very easy to give a speech about the economy but it is another matter for a president or a government to create some jobs. I don’t think that it will be very easy for Obama and I am not hopeful for it that much. As I just said that it is not only the work of the government and in fact creating jobs does not only depend on government activities. There are many factors and one of the most important factors is that the private companies would have to sacrifice some and think of giving some benefit to the people. The main problem with US economy is that most of the private companies have to think of their share holders and if they can not deliver good profit then share holders will not be happy. As a result, when your only focus is profit rather then creating jobs, helping the national economy does not get any importance or priority.
Another factor is the people. USA is a consumer based economy and here a lot depends on what people think. On the one hand, because many people are out of jobs so consumer confidence is not that much. On the other hand, US people have to perhaps become more educated about their economy and have to spend the money in a wiser way so that more jobs can be created. In fact, the people have to remember that they have to think of some good ways that can help the US economy and can help to create jobs. I do not see any effort from Obama administration in this regard. I think that president Obama and his colleagues should try to educate the American people about economy more and advise the people for spending the money in a way that can benefit the US economy in creating new jobs.
Because of these reasons, I think that it will be very difficult for Obama to create jobs in large number in 2010. However, I do not want to blame him because he was at the wrong time and wrong place. He got a lot of popular votes but he inherited a recession that he had nothing to do with. After all, Obama administration was not the cause of global economic recession or US economic recession. Even it did not start at his time but when he started his presidency, he had to forget other things and deal with this problem alone.
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