A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question.I think it is funny. One of the hats I wore over the year was process improvement through changing the corporate software engineering methodology. I always found it funny how bumbling the organization was when it came to change. They loved to tout that they were an "adaptive, learning organization" but the reality was that need to change had to bite them on the ass before they woke up, and the efforts to bring change were constrained by all kinds of internal politics. Mandating change from the top was seen as oppressive, so they sought to have the various groups individually adopt change from the bottom up. Sitting in the corporate division I got to define a new methodology and educate team leads to adopt it, but we couldn't institute it. Needless to say, most people gave it lip service while doing what they have always done.
As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through private contractors.
You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work. Think of it as the stimulus equivalent of getting the middlemen out of the student loan program.
So why aren’t we doing this? Politics, of course: government is the problem, not the solution, even when it is, you know, the solution, and cheaper than running things through the private sector.
Still, it might be worth discussing whether we shouldn’t try to include an, um, public option in stimulus, too.
The US strikes me as in a similar situation. Obama came in talking about "change you can believe in" but has delivered very little substantive change. Sure, new faces, new titles, a lot of dust raised talking about new initiatives, but precious little real change. Sad.
As Krugman points out, a WPA is very effective and quick to implement. You sign people up and get them involved in something as simple as cleaning the streets or doing other "beautification" projects. Maybe start up some quick and easy infrastructure improvements. (Think back, nearly two years ago as Bush was preparing his second "stimulus" bill, there was talk of infrastructure spending but everybody agreed it would take too long to gear up and get moving so that the job creation would be timely. I know things are slow in government, but two years is plenty of time to get an infrastructure project going. (Just think, WWII was declared on Dec 7, 1941, if it has taken 2 years to start to train troops and build weapons, the war would have been long lost. So government can move fast when needed.) It is tragic when those at the top can't get their act together. They get paid big bucks and enjoy great status. If they don't deliver they should be canned and somebody able to act be put in place.
Here's Krugman in another blog entry on the NY Times site pointing out that Obama has blown it:
Back in the first few months of the current administration, when I was writing piece after piece urging the new administration to adopt a more aggressive economic policy, what I had very much in my mind — and wrote about on a few occasions — was the possibility of a sort of political economy trap. If unemployment continued to rise, I feared, Congress wouldn’t draw the right conclusion — that we needed more stimulus. Instead, the verdict would be that Obama’s economic policies weren’t working, so we needed to do less. And high unemployment would also lead to Democratic electoral losses, further undermining the ability to act (since the fact is that today’s GOP is the party of economic ignorance). The result would be a persistently depressed economy, and a fading out of Obama’s promise.It is tragic to live in troubled times. It seems that my whole life has been wasted railing against incompetence at the top. You read history about empires that decline and great countries that fail. It is always because their elites become incompetent and indifferent to the plight of ordinary people. It is tragic to live through those times. I was born at a high water mark (shortly after WWII) and have lived to see idiocy and corruption undermine a great country (the US). Tragic.
I really, really wish I had been wrong about this — and for a while, as banks seemed to regain their footing and stocks went up, it looked as if the administration’s softly, softly policy might work out after all. But on the things that truly matter, above all jobs, reality has played out even worse than I feared. Today the unemployment rate passed 10%, a sort of brutal milestone.
...
Who’s to blame? The buck stops with the president. But did his economic advisers make it clear to him that the proposed stimulus was way short of what the math suggested we needed, even given what was known in January? Or was Mr. Obama really led to believe that his stimulus proposal was as bold as he claimed it was?
I don’t know. But I’ve got a sick feeling about the whole situation.
2 comments:
I read the WPA/CCC piece and commented giving the wrong link to this article . From the moment that talk of a stimulus began people have wondered why we have fed the very ones who started the crises. We should have been pumping money in one form or the other into the lower income levels. We still have people saying that this or that will raise unemployment and yet we see increasing unemployment. If we put people who are willing to work to work; we will see an economic recovery and renewed national pride. We would see a light at the end of the tunnel, but more importantly; a feeling of accomplishment and a renewed pride of citizenship and love of our land and optimism.
When I was in high school; I worked in the YCC program one summer. We worked very hard and learned a lot. I felt good about myself at the end of that summer and I had money in the bank. (Maybe I have found something to write about.) I know that people of any age would benefit from this kind of opportunity and our nation would see many benefits as well (far more than war experiences give our young people). This is something that will have a lasting affect on our country if we implement it and do it in every area of our nation (country parks and cities).
I agree Thomas... I don't understand why governments and organizations don't show more concern for the people at the bottom. A little encouragement usually goes a long way.
My only explanation is that the people at the top pal around with each other and so their empathy and understanding only reach out to those in their social circles.
When I worked, the company handed out special awards for people who had "impact" on the company. Invariably these went to managers. My experience was that while managers could be effective as cheerleaders, it was usually heroic efforts by people in the trenches that made the managers look good. But the people in the trenches were invisible to bosses high in the organization so they never got any awards.
What really bothers me is that it costs so little to provide a mass employment that puts a floor under people. If the $800 billion were spent to provide an $8/hour job to 10 million unemployed, it would cost the same $800 billion and would have been a real shot in the arm. Instead, the $800 billion under Bush's bailout of the banks disappeared down a rat hole and nobody has explained what that money actually bought besides big bonuses on Wall Street.
Post a Comment