The justification for governments giving incentives to companies and cutting spending on individuals - especially in 'tough' economic times - is that companies create jobs and so there is a natural trickle down of funds to the population.
Of course, this approach was dis-proven by Thatcherism and Reaganomics but it still seems to be a common anti-pattern for governments.
The error is the theory is that companies create jobs. Any company worth its share rating considers job creation as a last resort. Almost any other efficiency will be sort to reduce costs and increase productivity. The larger the company, and therefore more distant from the people of which it is composed, the less feeling it has about those people.
The only reason for an organisation to add jobs would be if they could not meet demand any other way. In other words the best way for a government to increase jobs would to increase the demand for services that jobs provide. i.e. increase the disposable income of individuals.
Of course, if you are looking across an entire country, shifting jobs from one industry to another does not really achieve the goal. Hence attacking the issue by dealing with large established industries is just shuffling jobs between one company to another - with little room for growth in the total.
Instead focusing on new and innovative industries - especially those which are labour intensive is likely to provide more bang for your buck. IN today's world that means knowledge based industries and new technologies. Apart from anything else the nature of the internet means that individuals are more capable of creating their own jobs now than at any time in the past. The options for commerce that it opens up, particularly in small, personal operations is enormous.
But the nature of politics has never been attracted to de-centralisation and distributed growth. It is much more flashy and news-worthy to publicity hungry politicians to focus on large showy projects.
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