Is an FDR type Government Work Program needed; as the U.S. continue to lose jobs

[DimplesinMI]

Source: Examiner.com

Unemployment has a long way to go still, before millions for jobless Americans will began to feel some relief. The October 8, jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, highlights that payroll continued to plunged in August as state and local government agencies cut employment. Meanwhile, private employers failed again to generate enough job opportunities to grow the nations' economy.

In fact, employers on an average cut 95,000 jobs within the month of August, according to BLS figures. Private business added 64,000 employment opportunities but, Governmental agencies eliminated 159,000 jobs. The government cuts were split between the continued shedding of temporary U.S. Census Bureau workers and, other state/local cuts.

Some economic leaders are calling for a President Franklin Roosevelt type Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, or a governmental jobs program, is need to stimulate employment growth. Yale economist Robert J. Shiller wrote in a recent in the New York Times article cited on Huffington Post, the following:

"Why not use government policy to directly create jobs -- labor-intensive service jobs in fields like education, public health and safety, urban infrastructure maintenance, youth programs, elder care, conservation, arts and letters, and scientific research?," Shiller noted.

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/job-search-in-detroit/is-an-fdr-type-government-work-program-needed-as-the-u-s-continue-to-lose-jobs

[independent_voter]

1. how about just quit glutting the job market with guest workers?

why not try that. since the whole premis of these programs is 'a shortage fo workers'

which we clearly dont have

[readmoreoften]

2. yes

[asjr]

3. It worked in the 1930s but I do not

know how it will work now. In the 30s we were not outsourcing all our jobs to foreign countries. That has to stop. If it isn't stopped soon there will be nothing manufactured in the U.S.

[Johonny]

24. I think it would work

I understand you would have to do more than this, but remember FDR did more than this too to get the economy restarted (or to create the modern economy). The US faces many of the same challenges as FDR did. Along with a works program the current administration would be wise to pass Obama's plans to turn from free trade to fair trade and to cap administrative salaries at 30-100 times the average workers salary. The administration would also be wise to return to FDR's small tax on stock transactions.

I think the #1 thing that makes the US similar to the 1930s is currently their is a whole new technology of infrastructure. One that emerging countries are installing and one that the US has done almost nothing to install. This technology in infrastructure is beyond the means of any one corporation to install and integrate into the country. Only the federal government can do it. The time really is now to restart these work programs and build the American infrastructure for the next century.

[arcane1]

4. It's a better idea than our present government job-creating program

otherwise known as the United States Military

[Lochloosa]

5. I still drive on roads and bridges in Ocala National Forest with signs that say:

Built by the CCC

[DBoon]

6. I'm afraid we will end up with a different country's 1930s job creation program

We can't have civilian government public works (that would be socialism. OMG!), but I'm sure the neocon wing of the republicans wouldn't mind invading a few countries.

And the teabaggers who complain about "Obamacare" and "record deficits" wouldn't blink an eye about massive military expenditures

[txaslftist]

7. Recommended (for the sake of discussion)

What we need is to get the jobs we sent overseas back here in the US.

The only way we can realistically do that is import barriers. We aren't going to get China to float the yen, we aren't going to get any other nation to stop importing to the US, so we can't stop the outflow of jobs and wealth FROM the US.

Out of the green initiatives that were supposed to stimulate the economy, as much as 80% of the money went to foreign nations (mostly China) who were producing the actual "green equipment". So that's a huge program, designed to stimulate the creation of US jobs, going overseas and leaving us with a few windmills, ethanol mills, solar panels and a huge tax bill.

So we need to bust up those trade agreements that put our labor on an equal footing with Indian labor, put up some serious trade barriers, stop the imports and grow our manufacturing economy, unless you want to all wind up living like they do in Bangladesh.

[billlll]

8. ZERO unemployment forever

A permanent WPA I say, needed


Reich. M Moore call for new WPA

WPA built Large apartment bldgs, small bridges in 30's.

Private sector jobs are not REAL jobs;
-many go to India

[ThomCat]

18. Permanent WPA! and Zero Unemployment!

Those are excellent and very worthy goals.

Those are goals our administration could be working towards.

Instead, we've got a hand's off policy on anything corporations can do, in a mistaken belief that if corporations CAN make a profit doing it, then corporations SHOULD be allowed to make a profit doing it, even at the expense of the American people and American Government. :(

[Vitruvius]

9. And WPA programs create TWICE as many jobs as gov't contracts to corporations

because less than half of the money paid to big business goes to wages (i.e. jobs); the majority goes to overhead, profit, executive bonuses, etc.

When the government hires workers directly, ALL the money goes to wages, i.e. to creating jobs. Which is why FDR and his administration created the WPA; they saw no reason to waste half the money on corporate welfare.

Note also that with all the Republican loopholes in the tax code, the corporate income tax has effectively been repealed for big business. It's OUR tax money, not big business'; it's time the gov't used it to create jobs for the likes of us, rather than profits and executive bonuses for the likes of them.

In addition, big business has a sorry record of exporting American jobs whenever they can, and laying people off while sweatshopping the survivors to the max. I see no reason to waste our tax money by sending it to the big business profiteers who have made life hell for so many of us who WORK for a living.

[billlll]

10. well said! nt

Nt

[billlll]

11. academics-written site for WPA revival

Yet easily readable.

Superb NYROBooks style info. Well, more
Readable.

www.njfac.org.

Natl Jobs For All coalition.

[valerief]

12. Well, since the banks won't lend, YES! nt

[ck4829]

13. We are crazy for not having an employer of last resort.

Stop letting corporations be the gatekeepers for the American Dream.

K&R.

[MannyGoldstein]

14. I think we should give money to bankers and the wealthy

They will take the money, and add some of their own, and give it to working Americans.

Sincerely yours,

The Obama Economic Team

[ThomCat]

19. LOL!

:rofl:

Well done.

[readmoreoften]

26. +1

[Viva_La_Revolution]

15. that's a big fat

HELL YES!

[fascisthunter]

16. Of Course It's Needed but these Free-Market Zealots

wanna try to recreate the economic and social system to fit their greed. ANY social program IS A THREAT! WHY???? Because their theories are built on bullshit and they know people would embrace more socialism... it's why wealthy families in this country spent tons of money spreading their propaganda AGAINST the LEFT. They are cowards hiding behind money and power and they are scared to death we won't put up with it anymore.

[jtuck004]

17. How can we do anything else?

We are letting over 30 million of our neighbors languish, losing their contributions for work and taxes. If those people were working they would be creating new offshoots of businesses, creating the ideas and products we need for the 22nd century. Instead we are propogating a system that could very well spell the beginning of decades of misery for our country, both internally and how we face the world.

Here is what the math looks like...

We have over 30 million people unemployed, underemployed, or too discouraged to even look for work.
125,000 jobs are required each month just to stay even - it has to be higher than that to reduce unemployment
Private business is creating about 50,000 a month net.
There is nothing on the horizon that will create a large number of new jobs - no leadership that is inspiring, no new Internet, no new technologies that are being exploited which require large amounts of labor and capital.

Unless something changes, we are very likely to see decreases in social security, medical care, and a double digit unemployment rate out to at least 2020. That is 10 years of not enough jobs.

That means there are people in your neighborhood who have worked the LAST job they ever will. How do they survive in the 10 years until their Social Security kicks in? How do they compete if they graduated from college this year, and their first chance at a real job will be when they are 30 ish and competing with the then current crop of college graduates?

It's the single biggest, and perhaps saddest, failure of this administration to throw "but look at what we HAVE done"
at homeless and hungry people for whom there are no jobs. We found $15 trillion to set aside to insure the million dollar bonuses on Wall Street, but none to create a jobs program for people with no hope? We found the willingness to mandate that people will send over a one hundred billion new dollars to companies that only provide insurance, but no health care. We made sure that obscenely wealthy people - many from other countries - wouldn't lose the money they had invested (knowing full well they could have lost it), but barely little to insure that people wouldn't lose their homes and lives in the aftermath of the financial crisis. And we sent a message (not the first administration to do this) that if you can get your friends and ex-employees into the government you can change laws that will allow you to rape and pillage the economy of the most powerful country in the world, and get paid for doing it.

We can do all this and not find jobs for people?

Now the investment banks who provided large amounts of funding for the Obama campaign have apparently decided that now, since they have the money their best strategy is to fund the Republicans to prevent changes that might take it away from them. When will politicians learn that you can't trust these people? That said, it would likely have been far worse with any of the other candidates that we had. The future waits to be seen...

But, we are all smart people, we know that people spending money today means that it will be filling China's coffers tomorrow, and
that is not a sustainable strategy. We have to not only train and employ people, we have to teach them what the impact are to their life and our country when they spend.

But we do have a globalized world - that is the reality we live in today. There are too many developing countries to think we can rely on tariffs - and we are not powerful enough to do anything about it anymore (witness the tariff Mexico just placed on our pork, or the tariff China just placed on chicken - they no longer have a reason to worry about anything we can do, and have told us as much on the international stage.

So, yes, this administration needs to develop the vision necessary to implement a jobs program, to understand that if we stay still we lose.

President Obama stood on a stage today and said private industry has created 850,000 jobs this year. The next three sentences could have been

1) "We needed 1,250,000 just to stay even".
2) "We needed 3,000,000 to begin to bring unemployment down".
3) "This is our jobs program going forward".

Instead we got "that's not enough".

uh, thanks for that.

[area51]

20. +1 n/t

[TexasObserver]

21. Absolutely. A jobs program to rebuild infrastructure.

WPA II sounds good.

[blindpig]

22. Damn straight

yet it seems that the capitalists are are stronger or mebbe less scared of us than they were in the Thirties. Nothing less than open ended general strikes will put the fear in them. We are far from that and will continue to suffer until enough people are willing to take to the streets for prolonged periods.

[Better Believe It]

23. President Obama would have to lift Ronald Reagan's ban on WPA type direct gov't jobs programs

Excerpts from two articles by Alec MacGillis -

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 8, 2009 and
Monday, November 9, 2009

Why has a White House that talks so much about boosting employment steered clear of the most direct strategy that could keep Americans on the job? .... aside from a small summer employment program for young people, it has not sought to create jobs on the public payroll, something the country did in the 1930s and 1970s.

President Richard Nixon gave jobs programs another go in the doldrums of 1973-74 with the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).

The program withered under President Ronald Reagan, who added prohibitions against public service employment (except for summer programs and natural disasters) that endure today. That the Obama administration shows little indication of lifting this taboo is a sign of how free-market tenets persist even when financial turmoil has called them into doubt, said John Russo, co-director of Youngstown State University's Center for Working-Class Studies.

As for direct job creation: there's a real nervousness about setting up anything that looks like a WPA-style jobs program. It's that reluctance that my piece is calling into question -- after all, is it really more politically damaging to be seen as doing a jobs program than to be facing double-digit unemployment?

.... we had direct job creation programs in place throughout the '70s, as my article recounts. It was called CETA, and it ramped up under Nixon in '73-'74 recession. Reagan ended the program, and implemented a new federal restriction against federal jobs programs, with exception for summer youth programs and national emergencies.

The Labor Department does have various job training programs in place, such as Job Corps. But the federal government is prohibited against doing direct jobs-program style hiring a ban that Reagan put in place and that the Democrats so far have balked at trying to lift.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110601900.html?sid=ST2009110604712

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/11/06/DI2009110603214.html

[readmoreoften]

25. Well, he'd have to raise taxes on the rich in order to get the money.

And he's not going to do that. They'll still be paying 60% less than they did under Eisenhower.

[maryf]

27. Kick yep, and we gotta demand it...nt