The Call for a New WPA

Economists have long stated that it would take years to replace the number of jobs lost during the Great Recession and unemployment was expected to stay high for the next few years.  As companies continually decide they don't want to hire the unemployed and more people max out benefits (either because they're 99ers or because the Senate is clueless), the critics claim that providing extended benefits is not a long-term solution. 

Maybe, maybe not.  Obviously dumping 1.2 million plus Americans off unemployment in a job market where there's still no jobs will only make things worse than better.   

As I am endlessly reminded, I'm in the best position to be hired being young and educated.  However, not everyone is so "lucky".  What then, do you do with a large group of people who don't have a college degrees, don't have jobs and don't have hope? 

FDR knew what to do with them.  You put them to work.    In 1935, as part of the New Deal, the WPA or Works Progress Administration was created.   The goal there was to put people, who wanted to work, to work doing things that we as a society needed anyway.   WPA built roads, parks, helped out in inner cities, funded arts, it became one of the largest employers in the country and pulled the country out of the worst of the Great Depression. 

One of the criticisms of the federal stimulus were that it wasn't big enough.  While it provided funds for some necessary repairs, it wasn't on the level needed to create large amounts of jobs.   In my own neck of the woods signs remind me that several highways in New Jersey have been repaved with the help of stimulus funds, but that seems to be all that's done and probably all that can be with the limit of the stimulus. 

My question is this, how many jobs has this actually created? I'm sure it's created some, but everyone can see that the stimulus alone didn't do much to reduce unemployment, just kept it from going as high as it could've.  

We need a second stimulus.  A larger one that includes the much needed unemployment extensions the Republican Senators object to.   

More than that though, we need a new WPA.  Jobs with the new WPA will have one important criteria that the private sector doesn't. 

The new WPA will give preference in hiring to those who have been unemployed more than six months.  Possibly even include some sort of incentive for hiring those who've exhausted ALL benefits.  

There are a million things a new WPA can do.  Our public transportation systems are third world in comparison to Europe or Japan.  We have lots of poor kids in the inner city who could use tutoring or daycare.   Supporting the arts is never a bad idea nor is providing retraining for education.  Even more important here, is that the WPA can have an arm that's dedicated in providing help to people who want to start small businesses.  

We currently have millions of workers in this country with almost every skill and level of education that you can imagine.  These people are itching to work, itching to be useful again and feel proud of themselves.  FDR understood this, why don't our current politicians? 

If we absolutely must fund this now, then simple - we cut down our aid to foreign nations.  Why is our own government providing unlimited aid to rebuild Pakistan, Haiti, Afghanastan, etc but can't spend a dime to rebuild our own?   If we want to help other countries, let's expand the Peace Corps as that does far more to help other countries (and our nation's own image) than our military industrial complex ever has.   

As Thursday's events have shown, many of our current Senators would be against this.  I have a simple solution to that problem, we lay them off.  The vast majority are already millionaires, it's not like they need the money.