We've all got our laundry lists of collapsing physical infrastructure that ought to be repaired or replaced through the spending of the Stimulus Trillions. (And it will be trillions eventually, even without the various handouts to the plutocrats of the financial system.) Railroads and mass transit, schools and other public buildings, bridges and highways and boat landings, national park facilities, and so on.
But there's another kind of infrastructure in which we should seriously consider investing some of that money: "Social capital". The "stuff" that cements our communities together, the network of associations that brings together the members of a community (on whatever scale) in ways that facilitate the getting done of useful things.
Related to social capital is the concept of human capital -- the aggregate skills, knowledge, and capabilities of the population. We've seen various calls for sending stimulus money towards education, but generally, those calls advocate conventional educational purposes, in particular, vocational training. But what if ...
... we decide to really throw out the old rules?
Consider one simple example. We know (the author asserted, without hunting for links) that the administration of He Who Must Not Be Forgotten Though We Dearly Wish It Were Safe To Do So utterly botched the project of bolstering our first responder systems. In much of America, first response systems (EMS and firefighters) are classic examples of Social Capital: local volunteer organizations working under a larger-scale umbrella. Moreover, the skills they possess -- the related human capital -- are not the skills upon which they primarily rely to earn their keep. Those skills are, however, highly valuable to the rest of society. (Which flies in the face of neo-whatever economics, founded on the dogma that the value of anything is equivalent to its market price.)
Keynes might have been satisfied to bury money in the ground and thus occupy people with the business of digging it up, but I am not. So here's a modest proposal: Why not pay people to obtain EMS/CPR training? $75 a day. And if someone's been drawing unemployment benefits for more than 4 weeks, require the training (though, they wouldn't get extra cash beyond their UI. i mean, be reasonable.)
The benefits of such a program are several. Here are the most obvious: First, our whole culture would be better off if as many people as possible had full, coherent training in serious first aid. (Hey, if it were up to me, it would be a daily part of public education -- simulation of and practice in the treatments for various injuries and maladies.) Second, people who are otherwise doing nothing would be doing something -- including, getting out of the house and spending some time with others in their communities, making connections, building the Social Capital, and what's more, strengthening their own selves against the economic stresses they may be enduring. Third, those people would be getting paid, thus putting spending money in their hands, as well as in the hands of the trainers. (My guess -- and its only a guess -- is that such trainers are currently hurting for work, as organizations with tight budgets are probably cutting back on such things.)
EMS/CPR training is not the subject of this diary, it is only the first, clearest example that came to mind. What other such non-obvious social/human capital projects can you envision/recommend?