How about some CCC and WPA 2.0?
 

- Unemployment is abysmally high (it's been above 9% for 24 of the past 26 months)

- The yield on a 10-year treasury note is amazingly low, presently at 2.17%. This means the US government can borrow money at 2.17%

- China is catching up to us, in terms of infrastructure and economy.

I'd love to see a new Works Project Administration. Put the country to work on a few large, coordinated projects (new electrical grid, high speed passenger rail?) and a bunch of interesting, smaller, more regionally specific or culturally significant projects (start with: anything that benefits everyone.)

I feel like the whole debt ceiling debate showed that, more than a deficit or spending problem, we have a political extremism problem coupled with a shitty economy. I don't know what's to be done about the political part. But I want to see something bold and radical with an eye for the long term. The Great Depression made state and national parks. Let's at least do something equally grand.

I love the idea. Been saying to do something like that for a couple years now.

IIRC I think we even talked here about building a wall or something similar to the Hoover Dam.

On a similar note - those getting welfare or whatever could also be put into the workforce in some capacity which would at least benefit society in some way. Heck they might even feel better about themselves making a contribution.

Great idea, if you want a welfare check make them work for it. Imagine that....

Screw that mercy.

If someone's working, it's a paycheck, not a welfare check. You're so tedious.

My grandfather worked for the CCC for a time. Before I knew him, of course. ;)

I'll have to ask my dad for some more information. I should know more about this.

That was kind of the point - to get some benefit for the majority out of the money spent on a minority. What do you have against that?

Or like when corporations use prison inmates for cheap labor?

Yeh just like that Pico. :eyebrow:
<sheesh>

?

Go look at what I quoted.

If I'm getting a check for working, what makes that welfare? That's what's so tedious. It's always how everybody's taking taking taking from him.

If you're spending money on a project, the expenses of the project, isn't the project what you're spending the money on? Aren't you seeking the benefit of having the project completed? To my mind, the money's spent on the project, not on the "minority", implying the wages of the people who work on it.

Unless you envision something stupid like paying one group to dig a hole and then paying another group to fill the same hole. Then you're spending money for no lasting project, nothing with lasting benefit, though those groups deserve to be paid for their labor, both of them. And if you got the money for such a project, more power to you.

But no one's suggesting such a project, only ones that have lasting value. And the expenses of such projects will include labor costs, as practically all projects do, even your own home improvement projects, though you might calculate your labor costs at $0.00/hr like I usually do.

There must be some communication breakdown here.
I was talking about the country getting some benefit (labor/whatever) from those receiving benefits. If it was tied into some type of program that also benefits the community/town/city as well, that sounds like a win/win. No?

help me understand who you think these "those" are, wouldja?

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as for the comm breakdown, my objection was the introduction into the conversation of the word/concept "welfare". Screw. That. If I am working, if I'm driving a shovel or whatever, I'm working. If I work, I get paid. "welfare" doesn't freakin enter into it. Hire me. Pay me for my work. That's what these kinds of programs should be and are. It's not a benefits distribution program. It's work for hire.

Does that help?

yup - I understand your position.

Just out of curiosity does anyone have a breakdown of how many tax dollars go to "welfare" and how that is defined* versus how many tax dollars go to corporate subsidies?

*e.g. would school lunches be considered welfare?

Interesting thing here:

Take a look at the Minnesota, Texas and Iowa welfare resource numbers...
Welfare Resources

Oh, this site also lists CORPORATE welfare - Corporate Welfare

One good idea is the notion of an "infrastructure bank". NYT article here.


Meanwhile, the ASCE's report "Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure" reveals "a clear and rapidly expanding negative impact on Americans’ pocketbooks in both the near and long term, and a dramatically accelerating negative effect on GDP in the near- and long-term" if investment in infrastructure is not made. "The data clearly show that the effects will be dramatically more negative, with $3.1 trillion in personal income losses by 2040. The negative effects on American GDP will also expand dramatically over time, with a near-term loss of $897 billion and a near-tripling of that loss to $2.6 trillion by 2040."

Because you are required to do something for the government in order to get a check; replace all had outs with a true work program. Where is the problem with that?

Why not take projects that have already been budgeted for and in the process of using tax dollars to complete, have people who get the welfare check required to show up and do a little work for it?

Isn't that what the WPA and CCC did? I don't think most of the projects were digging holes and filling them. Some of the most lasting projects of the WPA and CCC can still be found today.

Given what Obama did with his "Stimulus" and "Shovel ready jobs" program I am thinking the money was out there before it was wasted. A lot more people could have been employed if the money was given out more carefully. But it wasn't, it was squandered.

Well they are getting more than that to do nothing.

I am not against a social net to give to people who are in need a helping hand, but we have created entire generations of people who don't work and depend on the system to support them. I am not sure that is what was intended when it was developed. I think Clinton was among the first to try to tackle the issue and as I recall he did a pretty good job of reducing the welfare rolls, I am just saying the job is not done.