The country needs (a) millions of jobs, even if temporary ones (until the economy picks up more and generates more jobs on its own); (b) these jobs must be generated in short order (to prevent the current bleak outlook from affecting the outcomes of the 2010 elections); (c) the cost of these jobs must be kept low in order to not increase the deficit unduly.
These criteria can be best met if at least 85% of new funds that are allotted to the urgent employment drive were dedicated to paying wages (or cost of living for trainees)--but not spent on capital goods, infrastructure, creating new markets, or supervisory personnel.
This is possible if funds are made available to:
(a) Third sector (not for profit) institutions such as numerous hospitals, welfare agencies, schools, childcare centers, elder care, museums, etc.--if they commit themselves (i) to spend at least 85% of the funds allotted to them on wages (benefits included) and (ii) not to engage in net labor force reduction. (The last condition is needed to prevent institutions from letting go workers they currently pay for and replacing them with workers paid for by the new program.) Example: if schools add classes on teaching English to adults during evenings and weekends, they will need to hire more people (janitors included) but will not need to build more classrooms or otherwise engage in capital outlays.
(b) Public agencies, including law enforcement. In this case too, funds will not be simply allotted to various agencies, leaving them free to purchase, say, computers, but they would have to commit themselves to dedicating at least 85% of the funds to wages and not engage in net labor force reduction.
(c) Fund large-scale retraining programs in which participants will engage in full-time retraining and internships.
(d) Reimburse private sector companies for part of the wages for one year if they increase their labor force in short order.
The reasons expenditures on non-wage items should be minimized are: (a) these expenditures often generate work outside the United States, given that many of the capital goods are imported; (b) capital goods and infrastructure drives are much slower to take off then plain hiring (most of those infrastructure projects that are shovel-ready have already taken off and all such projects take off more slowly then hiring drives); (c) to prevent the funds from being used for bonuses for management, acquisitions, stock market speculations, and other activities that add few, if any, jobs.
One should deduct from the costs of the employment drive the savings that will be gained due to lower unemployment and welfare outlays and from taxes that are paid by those who work. In addition, there are the savings that result from lower rates of crime, psychosomatic and mental illness, family breakups, and suicides, which, studies show, tend to rise sharply when unemployment spreads.
One should also take into account that employment has a multiplier effect. As people return to work, they can purchase more--and thus make work for others and increase the revenues of small and large businesses.
Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor at The George Washington University and the author of The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics. He can be reached at icps@gwu.edu.
Dan Dorfman: Kinks In Obama's New Era of Hope
Obama is increasingly being viewed by Wall Street as a non-achiever, a veritable misfit when it comes to concocting a meaningful plan to revitalize the economy and a likely one-term occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
One thing, though. People who talk about keeping the deficit down are obviously talking only about the accounting in the federal budget. But we have a giant and growing national deficit that isn't part of the federal budget--it's distributed throughout millions of collapsing household budgets.
If you take federal money, even borrowed federal money, and give it to people whose own budgets are in the red, you shouldn't act as if that money has just disappeared down a rathole. It may add to the deficit on the national books, but it's reducing the deficit that's progressively crippling the real economy.
The notion of keeping the deficit low is getting misleading, the same way GDP is misleading. If you concentrate too narrowly on one segment of the economy, you miss an accurate overall picture.
What I am seeing is no view for where America needs to be in five years. No leadership that sets a goal of employment and projects and most importantly hope for this nation. What we really need is some great Manhattan projects....real city, state and national projects for this country.
Because I can not not give examples, you can agree or not but at least add to them....ten new atomic power plants built in the western center of the nation with a new green city and university built around it. Ten new coal plants built on the coal fields with a new green city. Rebuilding ten square blocks in every major city, homes, stores business...people would work, live and be safe in the area. I want that city on the moon and a space ship beyond the ......... Also the rebuilding of American manufacturing to compete with the world....comments, ideas
middleamerican2010
Casey
First public education needs to be changed.
Second we need to allow the rest of the world to pay, that means money and troops across this world. China, India and Europe pay lip service but fear if we just pull out of the war areas, that would mean more of their GNP would go, as our has to military not civilian improvements.
Third, and this is the biggest is you. You have ideas nort just complaints. We are the real future of America. We can make the difgference while the feds and politicians wring their hands it is still our land and country and we can choose open politics or as you say a closed society.
thanks
Casey
There are many entry level jobs out there, but business close in ranks and refuse to hire new college graduates entering a new career field. As someone who graduated in a program that does NOT require any education and minimal training in that field, I faced that discrimination.
I also live in Arizona where everyone seems to think their white collar job will be stolen by and illegal immigrant with no English skills.
I don't know why you couldn't hire people tomorrow to start painting people's roofs white, per the suggestion in the linked article.