The New York Times editorial page echoes this sentiment, arguing that “greater emphasis must be placed on job training and retraining and on better education at all levels” as part of preparing “as a nation for the prospect of a vastly different future.”

Teaching kids to read, write and calculate is good background for any job. Some specific training is all right, particularly training the individual seeks because he or she wants it. For jobs that you’re sure you’re going to need, like welder or cook, community colleges are good. But you don't create jobs by training people. You train people to fill jobs that you know you have. It's backwards to argue that America should “fundamentally rebuild the economy” by preparing "as a nation" through job training.

Jobs are not created by the nation. They are created by businesses, and businesses are created by entrepreneurs. Businesses succeed or fail in the market. Unless it bends the rules through political favoritism, government can’t know in advance who is going to succeed. Ask policy wonks and politicians now about the future economy, and you’ll get a lot of stuff about “green jobs,” meaning solar and wind power, recycling, energy conservation, LEED-certified architecture, etc. But that’s just a belief. They don’t know. Nobody does.

Think back to 1979, for those who can remember it. Inflation was above 10 percent a year, as were home mortgage rates. The economy was in a mess. There were lines at gas stations. If you’d asked where jobs would come from, people might have said solar power, electric cars, public transit, and, in the manufacturing sector, robotics and the computerization of large systems. The actual jobs were coming from microcomputer software (Microsoft), mail-order retailing (Amazon), fancy coffee (Starbucks) and a bunch of other things that turned out to be much more important than anyone dreamed of in 1979.

The recession does mean, as the New York Times says, that the American economy is to be renewed. Government needs to accommodate that renewal. It cannot do it by massive increases in job training, because for the most part, it does not know what jobs to train for.