Let's do it...

[Playinghardball]

[MrMickeysMom]

1. I like your positive thread, phb...

Much needed and certainly we have a good model in this country for doing this previously…

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-creates-the-wpa

[Glassunion]

2. Oh fuck that!

Where's the money to be made by the MIC, big pharma, the gun industry and Walmart?

That trillion could be way better spent blowing the shit out of a country half way around the world.

[cyberswede]

3. Like the CCC or WPA

Let's do it!

[Doctor_J]

7. Desperately in need of a new WPA

[TBF]

4. I agree -

we can tax appropriately and put folks to work ... or we can get ready for the revolution that will inevitable result from overwhelming income inequality.

[Initech]

5. And that would pay for itself 1 million times over.

[randys1]

6. Bernie for President,I say

[Dustlawyer]

14. Ditto!!!

[Cha]

56. President Obama has been trying to make this happen for years.. not only "Bernie" but we need

Dems to get out and vote in the Midterms.

[djean111]

8. I do believe that that upcoming "trade" agreements mandate that government

contracts over a certain amount MUST be offered world-wide, and that we cannot specify American materials or American workers. This might already be in place, but the trade agreements leave no stone unturned.

As far as saying well, foreign workers will at least spend money here - when I worked with H-1b visa contractors in IT, they lived 4 or 5 guys to an apartment, splitting the rent, they split the cost of one rental car and the utilities, never went out to lunch, and quite a few sent most of their money home, and got an allowance. So I have to laugh a bit at the assertion that at least foreign workers will spend a lot of money into our economy.

We would need a president like Bernie, and a non-Centrist or corporate-beholden Congress to override things like this.

[B Calm]

9. Lowering the social security retirement age would open up a lot of jobs too. Lowering Medicare age

eligibility would be another!

[Fred Sanders]

10. But Keystone XL will create 2,000. Way better than 3,000,000? Guess what the cons first vote will be

in the new Bagger Congress?

And how the mass media will applaud the job creators of the GOP and vilify and hate on Obama as he vetoes this massive job creation bill of the oil barons....even as they ignore the crumbling infrastructure begging to be fixed with 10 year Treasuries at 2%....

[PDJane]

54. That pipeline will only create jobs in that range if you count the people needed to clean it up

After it spills, explodes, pollutes the water......sure.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. I can imagine the Republicans claiming it's "unconsitutional" to create jobs like this....

They'd take it to the Supreme Court building which was BUILT by FDR's WPA.

[Enthusiast]

38. Republicans claim (with a straight face) that the government can't create jobs.

Absurd I know. I guess all those people in the military are working for the Kochs. They wish.

[99Forever]

12. A wonderful idea.

But, if memory serves me correctly, we didn't get a jobs program when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. What chance does it have of happening within the next two years?

I LOVE Senator Bernie, but I'm not holding my breath.

[daleanime]

16. So he, and we, should stop saying the truth?

[99Forever]

18. Where do you come up with that from?

What the hell is it with people reading bull shit into other people's comments that aren't even close to being there?

[daleanime]

20. "What chance does it have of happening..."

That's not intended to be dismissive?




And what is this with people actually reading your posts and responding? You would think their were trying to understand your opinion or something.

[99Forever]

21. That's called REALISTIC, not "dismissive".

You didn't respond to what I said, you made up what you thought I "intended" and snarked me about that.

At least be honest about it. FFS. Or is that too much to ask?

[daleanime]

25. When you have a conversation going on about a subject....

which is what these posts are, it can not be seen as any thing but dismissive for some one to join the talk just to say...it's not realistic.

I don't know how that can be called 'snark', but I do like the call for honesty. I honesty want to know where that anger is coming from.



PS-thank you for google work out.

[99Forever]

27. Did I say I was angry?

I said I was realistic. Why do you insist making things up and ascribing them to me?

[daleanime]

49. Is bullshit really an expression you use when your calm?

FFS indeed.

[99Forever]

50. What sort of nonsense is that?

Online "mood analysis" via word usage?

If someone actually makes me angry, you seriously think that I would hesitate to tell them so? Neither you nor anyone else "on the net" has that sort of power over me. So, keep on pretending to know what or how I'm "feeling," if you must, that's irrelevant to what's real.

[daleanime]

59. I wish I was half as deep....

as you make me out to be. Since I use words like that when I'm ticked off, it seems like a given that some one else using it may feel the same.


If I'm wrong about that, and you're not saying that I am, you have my best apologies.

[pipi_k]

39. Seriously?

When you have a conversation going on about a subject....

which is what these posts are, it can not be seen as any thing but dismissive for some one to join the talk just to say...it's not realistic.

Is that what passes for "conversation" these days?


"Don't bother responding unless you agree with me and everyone else"

??????


You know what would make for some interesting conversation?

ASKING someone with a different opinion some questions and then actually giving the person a chance to make a point that can be discussed instead of having a thread full of people all saying basically the same damned thing.

[daleanime]

58. You did notice that my posts tend to be questions?

How do questions equal "Don't brother responding unless you agree with me and everybody else"? Questions by definition are request for information, yes? Feel free to disagree, but if you do so please tell us why.


Which since you have it in quotations must be from some one else, could you tell me who?

[X_Digger]

13. Would folks actually apply for the jobs?

My father is in construction, and has a hell of a time finding competent labor.

He pays well for SW Virginia, ($11-$13 per hour to start, based on experience) and he goes through a few guys a month.

Some come to work stoned or drunk, some can never be at work on time, some work a few days, figure out it's hard work and quit, some can't be taught (or refuse to learn).. Maybe one in ten actually work out. He loses money on the nine that don't.

[B Calm]

17. At $11-$13 per hour you get what you pay for!

[X_Digger]

22. That's high for unskilled labor in SW Va.

What makes you think that 'infrastructure reconstruction' wouldn't provide similarly priced jobs?

WPA provided jobs that were actually paid *below* the market value of their labor, and still duration was limited. Those were the conditions placed on passage of the act to begin with.

[B Calm]

26. So says the employer!

[X_Digger]

28. Do you live in SW Va? Do you know what unskilled labor generally pays?

No? Didn't think so.

Hint: The average in residential construction starts out at about $9. Commercial? Maybe $10.

Check the want ads for Wytheville, Bristol, or Abingdon, Va.

Heck, check this table- http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_va.htm#49-0000

Carpenter's Helper- mean is $12.54, statewide.

*sigh* Why I even bother, sometimes I wonder.

[B Calm]

30. So keeping SW Virginia workers in poverty is a state right for employers, got it!

[X_Digger]

33. Unskilled labor should make $100k, right? Everyone deserves to make $100k!!11!! LOL!

Free clue- unskilled labor is unskilled. Nationwide, the mean is $13.20.

You actually get paid more for knowing how to do shit, mmkay? (Not sure what industry you "work" in, if any, but that's generally how these things go.) As you "learn" these things called "skills".. you earn more money.

Maybe you become a framer, or a roofer, or a mason, or an electrician. Then you get more money, ya? See how this works?

Or you can sit on your ass and stay unskilled labor the rest of your life, and whine that it's totally unfair that this other guy makes more money than you do.

What a fucking joke.

[B Calm]

36. They should make a liveable wage. How much money is the employer making?

[X_Digger]

41. Not even middle class, by national standards.

He's self-employed, and makes about $45k on a good year. Most years, he clears about $35k.

$26k per year in SW Va is close to or above the mean for the area, so it's a liveable wage there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_locations_by_per_capita_income

Abingdon? $22,486.
Bristol? $17,311
Wytheville? $20,223

Go ahead, tell me that paying *unskilled* labor *above* the mean is not a 'livable wage'.

*drops mic*

[B Calm]

43. I find that unbelievable.

But employers never lie or cheat on taxes, so you may be telling the truth.

[X_Digger]

46. I don't give a flying fuck what you believe. *shrug*

Construction in SW Va is a feast or famine industry.

I still remember finding used cars to buy in the fall that we could rebuild over the winter, so that we could sell them to make ends meet. Nobody gets their windows replaced when it's 30 degrees outside.

[B Calm]

51. I know, that's why you keep going on and on about how hard working unskilled labor

should live in squalor because they didn't better themselves.

[X_Digger]

53. I see you appear to have a reading comprehension problem.

$11-$13/hr is by no means 'squalor' in SW Va. That is more than twice the federal poverty level for an individual-

http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines

Or are you just trying (unsuccessfully) to be disingenuous? Weak sauce, if so.

[B Calm]

61. Okay, got it!

[X_Digger]

62. As expected, you got nothin. *yawn*

Go ahead, tell me how more than the median income in an area, that's 250% of the federal poverty level.. is 'squalor'.

Please, proceed.

[B Calm]

63. Keep preaching how 11 dollars an hr is fantastically great wages, I'm sure

you'll convince someone!

[X_Digger]

64. Awww, mad that the numbers are against you? Here..

Have a cookie..

[B Calm]

68. Not mad a bit, hell I'm retired. The numbers are against the working people in your state.

[99Forever]

23. $11 - $13 an hour for construction work?

And he can't figure out why he doesn't get and keep competent, reliable help?


Doesn't sound like the sharpest tool in the shed to me.

[X_Digger]

29. Entry level, no skill labor? That's higher than the average in the area.

Check the link I just pasted above.

Lol.

[99Forever]

35. Remind me not to move there.

And it still answers the question as to why he can't get and keep quality craftsmen. Crap wages like that won't even keep marginal construction workers coming to work. The proof is of that is, his own experience trying to do so. People making decent wages and benefits, under decent working conditions, with decent supervisors, show up for work and do a great job.

I've been employed by those that expect a maximum effort for a minimum wage mentality, guess what I did when the first opportunity to go elsewhere happened? Employers that take good care of their people, don't have problems getting and keeping quality help. Those that exploit their people? They are forever griping about "the lazy bums that don't show up."

[X_Digger]

45. Lol!! What kind of wages do you think that "infrastructure rebuilding" pays?

You think that the guy in the OP's picture pushing hot asphalt with a rake pays $50k annually? Bwahaha. The guy running the asphalt machine probably makes about $35k per year, if he's lucky.

75% of my dad's crew / contractors started out as unskilled labor. Guess who trained them to be roofers, electricians, plumbers, drywall guys, framers, and masons? That's right, my dad. I can name at least three different companies that have been started by someone my dad took under his wing.

He pays *more* than others around him for unskilled labor, and *still* ends up losing money on them. They aren't "quality craftsmen"-- at least not yet. He'd turn them into that, if they'd bother to show up sober and on time.

[jen63]

65. If those are sub-contracted state

or federal jobs, prevailing wages apply. They pay quite a bit higher than privately contracted jobs. Hard work, granted, but at least they are paid an above average wage.

[X_Digger]

66. 'prevailing wages' being the operative phrase.

One summer in college, I got on with a crew that was installing guard rails on a state highway in Tennessee. (State contract, with federal highway funds.) If I recall, it was either $8 or $9 per hour (this would have been.. umm.. 1993? 1994?).

Assuming that http://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html is correct, that would be ~$13.30 in today's dollars.

[jen63]

67. That is the base hourly.

Prevailing wages means that sub contractors are required to add health and welfare hourly and retirement hourly. Brings the base salary up quite a bit. What those workers choose to do with the extra is up to them.

[daleanime]

15. Please!

[99th_Monkey]

19. We can't do that

If we did this we might not have enough money to fight endless wars in the Middle East.

[MadDAsHell]

24. I wish we would have been focused on this...

before the Minnesota bridge incident in 2007 and "crumbling infrastructure" became a buzz phrase. I guess it makes a nice bumper sticker slogan but it cost human lives to get it.

Not to mention I'm guessing this would have been a lot cheaper to do before things were actually collapsing.

[Ramses]

31. Hear Hear!

[NewDeal_Dem]

32. +100. Unfortunately, in my state, we're busy laying off state employees who work with

the unemployed because the economy's sooooo good.

lol.

[Gothmog]

34. Good idea

[DrDan]

37. we'd rather go to war

[Enthusiast]

40. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

Revenue. To do this we need revenue. Or, we need to redirect military spending to domestic projects.

[aikoaiko]

42. So why doesn't HE do it?

He is a senator and he can demonstrate leadership by writing a bill and whipping up the votes.

If its not possible, then why bother, Bernie?

[RiverLover]

57. I read that this is on Obama's "To do" list before leaving office

along with the TPP.

In a speech before the Business Roundtable, an association of conservative CEOs of major U.S. corporations, Obama indicated that he was ready to go head-to-head with Democrats, labor unions, and environmentalists—core groups that oppose the TPP and other so-called “free trade” pacts—in order to move the controversial deal forward. He listed trade as one of his top four economic priorities for the remainder of his presidency, along with tax reform, immigration, and investment in infrastructure.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/obama-ready-defy-base-order-advance-trans-pacific-partnership/199643/

[Rex]

44. Didn't you hear? Turd Way types say public works are from the devil!

Much better to spend that trillion on the MIC or Wall Street doncha know!

[spanone]

47. gov mike pence in indiana must be pocketing fed funds for road work

worse fucking interstate highway in the country...I-65 south of indianapolis....just drove it

[B Calm]

69. It's even worse the further north you go.

[WillyT]

48. K & R !!!

[AtomicKitten]

52. Love that man!

Democrats should emulate Bernie (and Elizabeth ) and NOT the GOP.

[Cha]

55. Just what President Obama has wanted and been make to happen for years. Too bad

more Dems didn't get out and vote in the Midterms.

[leeroysphitz]

60. Can't do it. If rich people have to chip in to pay for it then it's socialism.

And we can't have that.