Last Friday, I posted a diary on DK with ten suggestions to create jobs. I invited people to make their own suggestions. As often happens on DK when you make productive suggestions, it drew very modest attention. When I compared the traffic to my last posting - Forty Savage Jokes - - my more productive piece - Ten Things Government Can Do To Create Jobs - - drew only 6% of the more incendiary posting’s commentary. Apparently, pie fights are more popular than productive conversation.
In this dairy, I am reposting suggestions made to my diary on job creation. While I may not be in complete agreement with all suggestions, I thank all those who made productive suggestions. I hope you will add some productive suggestions to the list.
The ideas proposed in the commentary from my previous posting ranged from tax increases, infrastructure investments, adjustments to work conditions, free trade relations and a variety of other suggestions. I will refrain from commentary on these suggestions, because the current crisis demands all ideas on the table. If none of the ideas posted below suit your fancy, please read my previous posting for other ideas.
No one idea is going to solve the problem, because systemic joblessness is a structural problem fed by 30+ years of neoliberal/neoconservative destruction of our living wage job markets and the replacement of living wages with easy debt. We need to triage the current crisis to prevent it from getting worse. A public direct-employment program (e.g. WPA, CCC, CETA, etc.) remains the most certain way to stop the bleeding and be sure that government dollars end up in the pockets of workers, not corporate coffers. This would also give the government time to address more thorny and structural problems in our economy that destroy wages and working conditions, as well as destroy jobs themselves.
So, please use the commentary to make a productive suggestion to create jobs. Here are the suggestions previously made by others.
1. Matching European investment with our own.
Roger Fox proposed infrastructure investments to bring our energy architecture up to the level of the European Union.
"on infrastructure, we spend something like 2%, we're like 2 trillion behind.
10% of electricity from solar in 10 yrs, 380k jobs
10% of electricity from Wind in 10 yrs, [probably] about the same.
Rebuild grid: High Voltage DC transmission, 6x less transmission loss over AC. great for long distance transmission, and solar and wind generate in DC.
3-4 more rail tunnels in/out of NYC."
2. University and Faculty Investment
Roger Fox also suggested greater investments in education.
"Universities need more buildings for teachers schools, we don’t have enough professors in Arts/Humanities and the Sciences, moving forward to 2030. We don’t have enough professors to teach the number of people that should be in college."
3. Changing the way we manage hiring and work conditions.
Jennifer Poole had several ideas intended to generate more hiring.
"lower the retirement age and create a 32-hour work week.
Local gov'ts should be able and be encouraged to hire and buy locally for projects and vendors -- requirements to hire union labor need to be adjusted in rural areas where the requirement to hire union labor means that you can't hire locally. I've belonged to two unions, I'm a big union supporter, but the importance and value of hiring locally also needs to be recognized in regulations."
4. Stop closing post offices
Jennifer Poole also suggested that our policy of closing post offices and consolidating mail sorting was counter-productive to job creation.
". . . Stop closing post offices and consolidating the work of sorting mail into fewer and bigger locations. It's amazing how far your mail has to go to get a bar code these days. Even a post card you drop at your local post office for a local post office box has to travel to the big sorting facility first, and they're considering consolidating further. The local Post Office is very important to small town and neighborhood life. and post office jobs are good jobs."
5. Environmental/Agriculture Investment
Jennifer was in a particularly creative mood and suggested putting the unemployed to work re-balancing our environment and supporting small farmers.
"Public works jobs getting rid of invasive species that require hand removal. Star thistle for one, here in Northern CA.
USDA already doing more to support small farms and farmers markets, but more could be done via letting small farms get property tax breaks and other subsidies the big farms do. No farms, no food."
6. Imposed Mirrored Restrictions on Chinese-American trade relations
Gravedugger took square aim at the massive trade imbalance between our country and China, noting the equalizing effects of NAFTA, he suggested
"We export a lot of wealth these days.
A simple thing that could lead to massive changes quickly would be a "mirror-mirror" trade policy.
We have fairly open trade with, say Canada. Through NAFTA and by general agreement, our trade policies reflect each others'.
The PRC, however, is an example of a very one way street. We could help the US economy a huge amount by mirroring the PRC's trade policies towards us. Currency manipulation, dumping, gross import restrictions on finished products...The US could impose mirrored restrictions or policies, lifting them as the PRC government does for our export goods."
6. Infrastructure investments in buildings
Odysseus suggested we extend our interest in refitting our existing architecture and infrastructure to all the buildings in the country, in a manner that addresses the high unemployment in the building trades..
"Hire an army of building inspectors. Offer free energy audits of all buildings. Provide a cost/benefit analysis of all items, with grant funding or matching funds. All of that works is necessarily domestic."
7. Raise taxes on the super-rich to fund works projects
PatriciaVA piggybacked off several suggestions I made in my previous posting about demanding that government contractors be forced to produce goods and services they sell to our government to be domestically produced and my suggestion for a new Public Employment program, with some useful ideas to advance those goals.
"I support some of your initiatives, not so others. With respect to Initiative #3, it is interesting that the Chinese demand that any wind turbines to be sold in that market must be 70% domestically-sourced. And if GE or Gamesa can't find a vendor, they must transfer the technology to enable a Chinese manufacturer to do so.
I'll also add that to the extent that any of your programs require more federal funds, we can't increase taxes on the working or middle-class.
Why not have President Obama spearhead an amendment that would enable the taxation of wealth, a graduated wealth tax targeting households with net worth of 50M,at 1%, up to 8% for Buffet and Ellison.
. . . extreme times demand unconventional solutions, similar to the ones laid out by President Roosevelt."
8. ‘Manualize’ toll/fee collection
Goinsouth had a suggestion to raise local revenue and address unemployment.
"Have people collect parking fees, tolls, etc"
Final Thoughts
Those who don't regard unemployment, underemployment and the destruction of living wage work as the central crisis for our country's future are - in my estimation - morally challenged and pathologically selfish.
Those who are in positions of authority and think they can PR their way out of the problem are not only going to be disbelieved, but they are masking a problem they need to confront head-on, making life worse for everyone in economic danger. They are also handing this issue to the Republican party. Reporting on job creation when anyone looking at the want ads sees it isn't there is developing a credibility problem for themselves.
Those who give lip service and nothing more to these issues are normalizing a crisis. Those who pursue marginal, symbolic or divisive 'progressive' issues - while ignoring bread and butter realities - are shooting their own issues in the foot. They tend to be seen as 'elitist' issues in the cheap seats, even if they have relevance up here in the nosebleed section. Better to seek common cause with the economic needs of the poor and working class - adding your issue to the coalition - than to continue ignoring economic reality, just because your personal economy is doing okay.
Those who think this party is going to do well in the next election, if we do not make progress on the economy as poor and working people experience it, are delusional. I offer the last election result as exhibit A. Even if some magical calculus or an absolutely wingnut Republican opponent allows President Obama to secure a second term, he will have no coattails to drag his fellow Democrats into office.
A more likely scenario is, if unemployment, declining wages and other factors remain the same, that the entire party will take another major hit in 2012. All things remaining constant from today, the people this party depends on for victory - the poor, the working class and the working middle class - will either stay home in droves or votes with their anger. As they did in 2010.
I say this not to inflame but to focus your minds more urgently on solutions to the crisis of joblessness and the destruction of living wages. Please weigh in with some suggestions. This is a 'all ideas are good ideas' moment. How might you suggest creating jobs?