Everyone is looking for a plan to create jobs in America. But what if we set our sights on helping people to work, rather than getting them hired to traditional positions with traditional salaries and benefit packages?

There's a big difference between work and jobs. The U.S. economy is actually primed to create millions of positions for people who are ready and able to work on a contract, part-time or project basis. Already the size of what I call the self-employed "free agent" workforce has exploded, encompassing about 44 percent of the workforce or nearly 80 million people, according to Kelly Services Inc. research.

Meanwhile, jobs in the classic sense peaked in early 2008 at about 139 million and recently have languished at about 130 million.

A new approach is needed, one that acknowledges the sea change in what employment means. The time is ripe to overhaul rules, regulations, obstacles and policies that hinder individuals from working on a contract basis and that block businesses from hiring the talent they need.

By Joe Minarik for Bloomberg Government

(Bloomberg) -- Avoiding a debt crisis requires squaring an ideological circle. Republicans say they will not accept tax increases; Democrats will not accept entitlement cuts unless Republicans give on taxes. 
There's no Gordian Knot solution to this dilemma. If it's to be solved -- and we had better pray that it is -- it will be with some transparently theatrical device at whose awkwardness the two sides will wink and nod.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky put such a clever device on the table, though conservative House Republicans continue to protest that it allows debt-limit increases through the next election with no deficit reduction whatsoever. So what else might work?

By Joe Minarik for the Huffington Post

The fate of former President George W. Bush's expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts has been a political dilemma all year. Even with the election resolved, it still is; but now it is an economic dilemma as well.

By Kevin A. Hassett and Glenn Hubbard for the Wall Street Journal

Earlier this week President Obama proposed tax cuts for business, including 100% expensing through 2011. In other words, firms that purchase new machines and other capital goods would be able to write them off immediately, instead of over many years.

Such a move offers a sound departure from the Keynesian thrust of the administration's earlier initiatives. Mr. Obama and his team now appear to accept that growth-oriented tax cuts provide a more reliable stimulus than government spending. The investment incentive the administration proposes is meaningful—though not without some potential pitfalls—and it offers a road map for future policy change to emphasize economic growth.

By R. Glenn Hubbard

In the fine print of the $110 billion tax "extenders" bill that is due to come before the Senate is an obscure provision that would do three things at once: turn the tables on decades of business tax law and practice, impose a penalty on more than a million entrepreneurs and further stall the country's economic recovery.

If passed, it would single out more than 1.5 million business partnerships - mainly those that invest in real estate - for punitive and discriminatory tax treatment.

At the same time, the bill would levy a heavy penalty on the owners of these businesses - and potentially destroy billions of dollars in value created by years of hard work.