Why Job Creation Agencies Stay Off the Table

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/why-job-creation-agencies-stay-off-the-table-15385/


Don’t expect a CCC or WPA in this decade as there are pointed reasons not to reach into the New Deal quiver.

Unemployment, stuck at just under 10 percent now two years into the recession, isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was during the Great Depression. Nearly a quarter of the work force was then out of a job. Bread lines curled around street corners, and unemployed veterans, their families in tow, were rebuffed from Washington by force.

Ultimately, the U.S. government was so pressed for response it pursued what’s now considered a radical solution. The government, quite simply, hired people. It created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed young men laying infrastructure in national parks. It created the Civil Works Administration, which briefly put 4 million people to work constructing roads and bridges. It founded the Works Progress Administration, which at its peak employed more people than the federal government does today (at a time when the American work force was one-third the size it is now).

“If someone had a good idea, something that might possibly be a good idea, it was floated,” said Nancy Rose, an economist at California State University, San Bernardino, and the author of Put to Work: The WPA and Public Employment in the Great Depression.

“They would just try things out. They were desperate to put people to work, to create jobs.”

The problem then may have been worse, but today the fundamental imbalance — too many workers, too few jobs — is essentially the same. The economy is recovering, but the employment hasn’t come back. And in a couple of scattered corners, on the Internet and in academia, this has prompted a question born out of the Great Depression’s legacy of public employment.


MUCH more at the link --

[Oregone]

1. Government will not move to help the people unless private industry can profit through it

Therefore, they will always prefer handing out contracts than jobs.

[SocialistLez]

4. +1 NT

[leftstreet]

2. The Military and Prisons are the new WPA

K&R

[Donnachaidh]

3. It's SICKENING to watch the Army ads specifically targeting shows teens watch

I've got enough of a big mouth - I've embarassed recruiters AND school officials that allow recruiters in my kid's high school. I tried to keep one of my son's friends in school, because the only future I see for him is the military, or prison. As he loves the *herb* I think he might wind up there first. I guess that is the lesser of two evils - because he doesn't become cannon fodder in jail.

And now the schools are under attack with budget cuts. Our kids are screwed.

[CrispyQ]

7. +1

The bad economy has been the best recruiting tool the military has had in years.

[supernova]

5. Thanks

I've wondered the same thing. How come we aren't talking about a new WPA or CCC?

It's not like we don't have things that don't need doing around here. Crumbling infrastructure needs repairing: bridges, highways, water and sewer systems, new transport systems need installed, new alt energy plants need building, schools need teachers, and so on.

Though I do see that you don't have to move people around the country to big labor camps like they did in the 1930s. It's likely there are plenty of people in a given area for a project.

I hate, HATE that we are stuck in this gotta let private enterprise do it with tax cuts rut.

[tonysam]

6. What a bunch of nonsense.

Unemployment and underemployed are very close to depression-era levels. A lot of people aren't being counted.

There is no excuse for the government to ignore jobs programs when private industry obviously isn't doing the job.

[jtuck004]

8. Emily Badger has some facts wrong...

For some people unemployment is very much at the levels of the depression era, 25 to 30%. One should note that this is last year's data, so things are very likely perceptibly worse, and deteriorating for many people, based on current BLS data. Bread lines have simply been replaced by food stamps and TANF. Income differences weren't nearly as imbalanced as they are today.

The administration might be tired of being "painted as more liberal than they are" (according to this article), but perhaps the lesson they should learn is that people who stand up for their beliefs energize people who will vote for them (wishy washy Specter comes to mind). The current administration was voted into office by people who, I think, believe that work is important, and being paid enough to survive is as well, and expected that change.

Instead of floating "trial balloons" about cutting the deficit perhaps they should INVEST a trillion dollars hiring people to rebuild our infrastructure, work with schools, and help businesses that want to create a stronger and more just country re-create the powerful economy we were building when unemployment was 2.5%. Or just pretend to care a little more about working mothers and fathers than people who wear three-piece suits everyday.

data follows...

Income
Decile   Range of Incomes

Lowest - $12,499 or less
Second - $12,500 to 20,000
Third - $20,000 to 29,999
Fourth - $30,000 to 39,999
Fifth - $40,000 to 49,999
Sixth - $50,000 to 59,999
Seventh - $60,000 to 75,000
Eighth - $75,000 to $99,999
Ninth - $100,000 to 149,999
Top - $150,000 or more


        Unemployment
Decile      Rate

Lowest   30.8
Second   19.1
Third   15.3
Fourth   12.2
Fifth   9
Sixth   7.8
Seventh   6.4
Eighth   5
Ninth   4
Top   3.2

http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/Labor_Underutilization_Problems_of_U.pdf