Restore the Economy by Jobs and Education

All predictions say that even though the recession is technically over, unemployment will decline only slowly and over several years. Since -- as has been pointed out -- 10% of the population controls some 90% of the investment market, that 10% may be quite comfortable with the status quo, but for the other 90% of us the situation is at least worrisome and, for the 10% who are jobless, the outlook is just plain bleak.

It may be necessary to continue to pump money into Wall Street and big corporations and the like, but none of this has much immediate effect on the jobless.

There has been talk about job creation, but I have heard little emanating from Washington that sounds as though it will do much anytime soon, and what I've heard doesn't sound like a comprehensive coherent plan.

Here's my proposal:
First, some self-evident facts:
1) We are going to have to subsidize the unemployed for a long time.
2) The unemployed, for the most part, have lots of available time.
3) There is much work that needs doing in this country, including a) building/repairing/ upgrading facilities in national, state, and local parks and other public facilities; improving streets, highways, and bridges; building mass-transit (train, streetcar, and bus) roadbeds and rolling stock; c) upgrading the electric grid and transmission facilities; d) developing, manufacturing, and installing alternative power equipment -- solar panels, wind turbines, etc.
4) We are going to need more, and more highly trained, workers for a vast range of technologically advanced fields in the future: alternative power, medical technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and many others.

I would put all these indisputable facts together in this way:
Instead of just providing unemployment checks, let's offer most recipients two alternatives:
1) You can go back to school to learn some advanced skills. Government will put lots more money into paying stipends to those who want to improve their skills -- and perhaps the stipends will be bigger than the unemployment schecks. And while several million unemployed ate back in school, hundreds of thousands of teachers (who might be unemployed scientists and engineers) will also be given employment. And when the recession is truly over, and jobs are again plentiful, there will be a large workforce available of people with new high-tech skills.
2) Or you can move into any of a range of WPA or CCC type jobs: The government will pay wages for people who are available for relatively low-skill jobs improving the nation's infrastructure and public facilities. Many state and local governments have lists of "shovel-ready" jobs, some of which are already being done with stimulus finds. (Or if private companies need a boost to do many of the tasks suggested in (3) above, government might supplement wages, sort of like older OJT -- on-the-job-training -- programs.)

The advantages of this approach to the unemployment situation should be clear. Roughly the same amount of money would be spent, but this way it would produce improvements to the nation's infrastructure and facilities, and it would train a workforce for future jobs.

We're eating our seed-corn!

We're far enough away from pioneer times that many now don't understand "eating your seed-corn." In that difficult era, you'd grow as much as you could, knowing that it had to do two things: feed you all winter, and seed the fields in the spring for the next year's crop. If the crop had been poor or the winter long, you might be very hungry when you'd eaten the feed-corn and all you had left was the seed you needed for next year. But if you ate that, there wouldn't be a crop next year. Farmers then knew that no matter how hard the winter was, you couldn't eat your seed corn.

The crop that should matter to all of us is our young people -- the next generation, those who will provide not just the brawn (not much of that is needed these days) but the brains to invent and develop and produce the ideas and technology a competitive society needs -- if it wants to stay competitive.

When I started in the job-training/manpower-development field in the late '60s, it was accepted government policy to expand training opportunities when unemployment rose. How better to be sure of a trained workforce when the economy started growing again? And it made lots of sense to pay people a stipend to go to school rather than just hand out unemployment checks or welfare money (though there might still be a need for some of that). Either way, you put money in the hands of people who need it, but this way you got something back by investing in a future skilled workforce.

With all this in mind, I have been shocked to read almost daily about the state and local governments and the universities cutting back on education, laying off teachers, dropping courses, raising tuition, and generally making it harder for young people (and older ones too) to improve themselves.

And, ironically, by using hard economic times as an excuse for cutting back on education, government has made hard times harder by increasing the amount of unemployment. Penny-wise and pound-foolish!