Key Issues: Divergent Views on Jobs and the Economy

October 25th, 2013 by New Jersey Future staff

The gubernatorial candidates have very different approaches to growing the economy and creating jobs.

This is the latest in a series of articles from our friends at NJ Spotlight laying out the critical policy challenges that the next governor and Legislature will face, as well as their positions on these issues.

Listening to Republican Gov. Chris Christie and his Democratic opponent Barbara Buono talk about jobs and the economy in New Jersey, you would think they were talking about different states.

Buono sees a state with 400,000 unemployed workers unable to find jobs, a state that ranked 47th in economic growth two years in a row, a state that gives $2.1 billion in tax breaks to corporations, but condemns hundreds of thousands to work for a “starvation wage” of $7.25 an hour because its governor vetoed an increase in the minimum wage. She blames the state of the economy on Christie’s failed “trickle-down, supply-side, Romney-style economics.”

Christie sees a state that created 140,000 jobs in four years and bounced back from superstorm Sandy, a state that turned around an anti-business climate by cutting business taxes and blocking a new millionaire’s tax, a state that merged Rutgers and UMDNJ into a mega-university that can help the state compete for biotech and high-tech jobs. Christie said rebuilding the state’s economy was difficult because of the “mess left for us after the Corzine-Buono years.”

Read the full article on NJ Spotlight.