USA didn't sell at a profit. But the loss was $10.5B to save (according to the article) 1.2M jobs, and saved $34.5B in tax losses. Even if you ignore the saved tax income, thats less than $9,000 per job saved.

So the bailout was probably _still_ a net positive for the US.

>If you want to make sure people have money so that demand is increased then just give them money

In Japan they'd mostly just put it in a savings account or use it to pay down debts which wouldn't contribute much to demand.

Well, take a look on how Brazil is doing, since they had this idea in (more or less) 2007 to save the economy from the global crisis, and tell me more about it. give a special attention to the years 2014-2015.

> If you want to make sure people have money so that demand is increased then just give them money, don't keep useless jobs around.

Ideally yes, but that's politically difficult.

In spite of fifty+ years of MBA thinking, jobs aren't really fungible.

When you fire a lot of people you're not just reducing costs - you're also hoping that you will never again need the skills and the knowledge of your internal processes that those people have.

Sometimes it's a good bet. Sometimes it isn't.

Also something about the commonly held belief in the dignity of having employment (especially in a culture like Japan's) and supporting the family.