Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?

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By Stephen Pizzo (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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The economy has lost 1.9 million jobs so far this year as payrolls dropped for 11 consecutive months. U.S. companies eliminated 533,000 jobs in November, the most since 1974, and the unemployment rate increased to a 15-year high of 6.7 percent, the government said last week. (Bloomberg)

While the official unemployment rate is reported to be around 6.8%, that does not reflect the number of people who have simply given up looking for a job. Experts say when those folks are added in the real unemployment rate is somewhere between 12-15%. That's just 10% below where the unemployment rate stood when Roosevelt created the WPA.

Do we really have to wait until things get that desperate before we put Americans willing and able to work can find work. And in so doing produce something more of value rather than an unemployment check stub? Unemployment insurance systems across the nation are going to come under enormous strain if we don't provide jobs for millions. So, with the creation of a new WPA jobs should be provided to those who can work, reserving unemployment checks for those who cannot work.

A new WPA would benefit everyone involved, including taxpayers, just like my CCC proposal. Our crumbling infrastructure would benefit, our towns and cities would benefit, our tax coffers would benefit, our social fabric would be renewed.

And it may be that last thing that will prove to have the most lasting and significant benefit. During the immigration debates we heard many times that Mexican immigrants only take jobs Americans won't do. While that claim was always a bit of a sweeping overstatement, there was also a large element of truth there. I'm 63-years old, and over my adult life I held a lot lousy, hard and dirty jobs – including shoveling fresh cow crap every morning, seven days a week, 365-days a year.

In my time, my father's time, his father's time and as far back as we can recall, that was the common right of passage. It was the norm, not the exception. It was a form of paying ones' dues at the bottom of the job ladder. I'm not saying I liked it, but I never felt as though I was being treated unfairly.

Once I climbed out and into a suit and tie, I started to notice that the youngsters coming up behind me had been “spared” this right of passage. I also noticed they complained a lot about things that didn't matter. Minor perceived slights became major affronts to their “self-esteem,” and violations of their sense of entitlement. Human Resources departments swelled, morphing into quasi psychiatric aid stations for bruised feelings.

A lot of those former young cubicle rats are now, or soon will be, whining to the folks in line with them at their nearest unemployment office. And let me tell ya, they will NOT be amused.

But what they will be is sobering up fast as they watch lifestyles they thought were constitutionally mandated dissolve before their eyes.

Enter the WPA. Gone will be soul-crushing office cubicles replaced by the great out of doors, rain or shine or snow. Paper jams and meetings, replaced by road and bridge work, cleaning city streets, and manning federally-financed daycare centers so working parents can take WPA gigs. Some will prepare or deliver meals-on wheels to the elderly, teach or aid teachers in the classroom. Their days will no longer be filled with “urgent” Blackberry emails about getting that bullshit sales report in on time or bitchy Tweets about the boss. Gone will be time wasted in long meetings, the sole purpose of which were to get “buy in” for a decision no one wanted to take personal responsibility for, least it go wrong.

Since these youngsters did not pay their dues, and instead moved straight from school to company cubicle, they are much like those inner city kids whose view of the real world is narrow and self-focused. They need to be sprung from their velvet cells and introduced to the rest of the world and life.

As with petty drug offenders sent off to the CCC to commune with nature – and their own inner demons, a stint in the WPA would reprogram an entire generation of white collar Xer's. They will pay their dues, and in the process become so much more valuable to themselves, their communities and their companies in the better years that follow.

Finally, Fund All Things Green

Conversion and start up costs are the one of the biggest reasons clean and renewable energy sources, like sun and wind, are uncompetitive with oil and coal. So let's use a hundred billion of this money to kick start as many large-scale green projects as we can. Because once things return to normal, interest in clean energy will again be shoved back in the closet. You and I both know that's true.

One last idea. Companies across the nation are swimming in red ink, much of which is from the burden of trying to provide their current and retired employees with some modicum of health care. This would be the right time to chuck the current failed private health insurance system for a government created, but public/private-sector managed, single payer system. One health insurer, one set of forms for doctors and hospitals, one company to negotiate with giant pharmaceutical companies. And one company to cover everyone, regardless of age, prior conditions or current medical condition.

We will be forced to go to a single payer system sooner or later, and what better time than now? It would not only erase the shame of nearly 50 million uninsured Americans but would take an enormous liability off the books of every company, or every size, from Tito the Carpenter to General Motors.

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Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a (more...)

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