Let's Get Rolling on Unemployment -- We Need a Direct Govt. Jobs Program

via AlterNet:



Let's Get Rolling on Unemployment -- We Need a Direct Govt. Jobs Program

By Isaiah J. Poole, Blog for Our Future. Posted December 2, 2009.

At a time when unemployment is expected to exceed 10 percent for the next several months, we should be talking about direct job funding by the government.




A federal program of direct job funding, even at a time when unemployment is expected to exceed 10 percent for the next several months, is the third rail of any discussion about reducing unemployment. But to say that the government should not, to borrow a phrase from green-energy activist Van Jones, put people to work doing the work that needs to be done, is not only inhumane, it makes no economic sense. It's worth making the effort to get such a program into the political mainstream.

One element in the five-point jobs program unveiled Monday by the Economic Policy Institute is a public service jobs program. "If the private sector can’t put people back to work, then the public sector must," the report said.

EPI proposes a program that will spend $40 billion a year over three years to employ one million people. The money would be distributed through the Community Development Block Grant program. From the report:



The proposal parallels one of the major planks in the AFL-CIO's own five-part jobs program released last month, in which the union called for putting people to work "restoring our environment, providing child care and tutoring, cleaning up abandoned houses and more." These jobs, both the AFL-CIO and EPI stress, would not replace existing public-sector jobs, which both groups propose to save through a separate program of aid to state and local governments designed to prevent budget cuts to vital services. Both organizations also agree that the jobs should pay prevailing wages. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144302/let%27s_get_rolling_on_unemployment_--_we_need_a_direct_govt._jobs_program

The financial industry pushed this to facilitate the squeeze play they are currently running.

Don't expect too much on the home front while we're shoveling money into the black hole that is Afghanistan.

The way things are looking

on obama's "to do list". create jobs and everything else will fall into place. why not a WPA?

and I worked in an impoverished community doing advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised.

I got paid a pittance as a "volunteer" but it gave me the experiential foundation for a lifetime commitment to economic and social change. I had to live in the community where I worked and got a biweekly stipend which was just enough to live at poverty level.

It was a government financed job designed to help the poorest of our country (like the Peace Corps but a domestic program, a domestic Peace Corps)

I probably did more good work in that year than any year since.

I helped hundreds of people improve their lives and by extrapolation helped thousands have a better life and improved the iner city community where I worked and lived.

I was 18.

Jobs are the only thing that will save this country