It's unclear how many jobs will be created through the Defense Department projects. Most of the construction jobs are awarded through multiple award contracts, in which the department guarantees a minimum amount of business to certain contractors, and lets only those contractors bid on projects.
That means many of the contractors working on stimulus projects already have been busy at work on government projects.even the stimulus money which is being spent [100]Donald W. Riegle Jr. - former chair of the Senate Banking Committee from 1989 to 1994 - wrote (along with the former CEO of AT&T Broadband and the international president of the United Steelworkers union):
It's almost as if the administration is opting for a rose-colored-glasses PR strategy rather than taking a hard-nose look at actual consumer and employment figures and their trends, and modifying its economic policies accordingly. [101]
How Much Unemployment Do We Want?
On the one end of the spectrum, Article 23 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares:
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.[102]
In other words, the U.N. says that there should be essentially no unemployment for those who wish to work.
On the other end of the spectrum, some people - who make a lot of money during periods where the condition lead to high levels of unemployment - are comfortable with unemployment percentages reaching those in the Great Depression.
Societies should decide for themselves what level of unemployment they consider acceptable, and then demand policies which will accomplish that goal to the greatest extent possible. As discussed above, there are many factors which affect employment levels, and so solutions are complicated.
However,
without an open and visible public policy debate about the issue,
unemployment levels will either remain second order affects of policy
choices concerning other elements of the economy, or will be decided
behind closed doors by decision-makers who may or may not have the best
public interest in mind.
Public Funding
As
the above facts show, unemployment is a very serious problem in the
United states, and world-wide. The policy responses of the U.S. and
other Western governments has not been working. As discussed above,
there is no simple solution.
Senator Riegle recommends a 4-part prescription, including:
Ensure that loans and credit facilities are readily available to the nation's small and medium size businesses and manufacturers.
Many of the top economists argue that we need to break up the giant banks which are insolvent in order to save the economy. [103] Fortune[104], BusinessWeek[105] and Federal Reserve governor Daniel K. Tarullo[106] have pointed out that breaking up the largest, insolvent banks would allow more competition from small to mid-size banks, and that such banks may actually make more loans to small businesses. More loans to small businesses would lead to more employment by those many small businesses.
In addition, the U.S. has largely been financing job creation for ten years. Specifically, as the chief economist for BusinessWeek, Michael Mandel, points out, public spending has accounted for virtually all new job creation in the past 1o years:Private sector job growth was almost non-existent over the past ten years. Take a look at this horrifying chart:
Between May 1999 and May 2009, employment in the private sector sector only rose by 1.1%, by far the lowest 10-year increase in the post-depression period.
It's impossible to overstate how bad this is. Basically speaking, the private sector job machine has almost completely stalled over the past ten years. Take a look at this chart:
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