Due to losing a "fight" with my son over the TV station to be tuned in, I was forced to read the liveblogging of the AFL-CIO Democratic Presidential Forum/Debate this evening. I was playing catch-up to the events going on when I decided to take up the challenge by Blue Waters Run Deep to compose a diary on the Works Progress Administration (WPA). I decided to use this as a chance to present a bit of history and to envision what it could look like if implemented in the near future. Join me after the fold for more... thanks!
The Works Progress Administration (later Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most comprehensive New Deal agency, employing millions of people and affecting most every locality, especially rural and western mountain populations. It was created on May 6, 1935 by Presidential order (U.S. Congress funded it annually but did not set it up).
Although a few on the Right might disagree with me, the WPA was probably the single-most factor involved in resolving the crisis brought about by the Great Depression. Granted, this program in and of itself did not totally alleviate the problems caused by the Great Depression; however, it did allow most of this nation's residents at the time a great deal of dignity by providing work, at regionally prevailing wages, for a restless labor force. Remember that this was a time of high unemployment and depressed prices for commodities. The previous Hoover Administration proved that doing nothing only worsened the situation, to the point where around 25% of Americans were unemployed.
About 75 percent of WPA employment and expenditures went to public facilities and infrastructure, such as highways, streets, public buildings, airports, utilities, small dams, sewers, parks, city halls, public libraries, and recreational fields. The WPA built 650,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 buildings, and 700 miles of airport runways. Seven percent of the budget was allocated to arts projects, presenting 225,000 concerts to audiences totaling 150 million, and producing almost 475,000 pieces of art.
Needless to say, were it now for the WPA, this country would not have been anywhere nearly prepared to enter into World War II. Most of the works built by the WPA would have been a necessary antecedent to entering into this conflict, and America would not have been able to respond with the speed it did without this "pre-investment" in national infrastructure. Additionally, an impoverished nation very low on morale would have been much more pliant to competing ideologies extant during the times and much less willing to join in the fight.
The key to this diary, though, is the Investment in Infrastructure; these major building projects would never be constructed in a pure laissez faire capitalist economy, since there would be no obvious and immediate profit motive involved. It is this key idea, an INVESTMENT in Infrastructure, which is totally missed by the neo-cons running the country today. They fail to realize that government can act for the betterment of all, especially in these potentially large-scale enterprises.
Since we have been endured the failed flirtation the Republicans have had with neo-conservatism (read: corporatocracy), I would recommend that the best way for this nation to recover from this total lack in public infrastructure is to recast the WPA in an updated role to reverse the 30+ years of damage. The shame that is the Bush Administration's response to Katrina in NOLA and the rest of the Gulf Coast, as well as all of the Nation's bridges and roads in severe disrepair would be a great start for this program. Even if we were to take this government's latest figures for unemployment, at 7.1 Million people, a revamped WPA program would go a long way towards putting most of these people back to productive work, but also give most of them some training to stay employed over the long-term. What better way to build a better America than to start enabling Americans to build that better country?