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I’m watching Ken Burns’ fascinating story of the national parks, and tonight’s episode describes how FDR created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in his first days.
The CCC was immediately assigned the task of fixing up the national parks. And within three months of its creation, the CCC had over 300,000 men building/repairing roads, trails, cabins and lodges — creating access and national park treasures that are still enjoyed today by millions of Americans. Eventually, they would plant a billion new trees.*
The CCC was only one of several public works projects created in the New Deal. They put millions of people back to work, doing public projects that were worth doing that wouldn’t otherwise have been done without public investment. They gave folks who were broke and jobless a real job, some dignity and a little money to send back home. Burn’s film shows them at work, at play, and lining up to get their mere $25 per month — but proud to get it and proud of what they were doing.
We were a decent country once.
The last few days have featured stories about how unemployment is now between 9.8 percent and 17 percent, depending on how/whom you count. The people who keep track of these things tell us that there were 800,000 more jobless during 2008 than they originally thought.
Economists tells us the "recovery" — we need another name for a process that is so indifferent to continued human suffering — will be "jobless." That means we’ll have unemployment rates of 8 to 10 percent for at least the next couple of years and still unacceptable levels into 2012, unless we do better. Heck of a job, Democrats.
It’s true that most of what we see now began in December 2007, and the financial collapse was handed to Obama; but are Democrats really planning to run on that message?
Under the Democrats, the federal government is pretending that there’s nothing more it can do to change these numbers. Obama said yesterday he’d asked his advisers if there was some way to help — as though he just thought of the idea. His advisers all insist we don’t need another stimulus; they ignored calls from prominent progressive economists months ago that we’d need a major jobs program. Now they say we should just let the existing effort play out, even though no economist who’s been right believes that’s enough. Sen. Schumer said the same thing today on This Week.
On the same show, Alan Greenspan, the Fed Reserve Chair and regulator who was not just asleep at the switch but actively promoting the housing bubble, had nothing to offer other than extending unemployment insurance. His answers to Stephanopoulos’ softball questions were incoherent.
What are Congress and this President thinking? Are they tired of governing already?
I’d trade the whole sorry lot of these corrupt, privileged enablers for just a handful of the enlightened leaders we had in the New Deal.
* The video was the Winner of the Junior Individual Documentary category in North Carolina for the 2007 National History Day competition. The documentary is by Corey Biddix, who was an 8th grader at Harris Middle School
John Harwood/NYT — WH may put new stimulus/jobs into next SOTU speech
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Is how much money today? I want America back to work I want a second real Stimulus. China is spending more per capita on stimulus I heard than us and the cost of living is lots cheaper!
Any chance we can get a second Stimulus next year because with unemployment at more than 10% either we get more jobs soon or we will lose the House and the Senate.
Listening to Greenspan on the economy the guy who’s incoherent mumbling was called Greenspan speak and was interpreted to mean entirely contradictory things by his various interpreters?
The Guy who saved the economy by creating another much worse economic bubble?
The Guy who when asked about tax cuts in a time of war waffled?
I suggest that whatever Greenspan says we do the opposite!
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..Id=5175329
Greenspan speak try just try and figure out what he’s saying! Disordered speech can signal a disordered mind
Greenspan’s disorder is well worse than Joe the Plumber doing stand up.
Thanks, Scarecrow. You said:
We’ve got some good ones available; but they’re just not in the Government yet. I have in mind, Jamie Galbraith, Joe Stiglitz, Dean Baker, and Elizabeth Warren. Maybe Robert Reich and Paul Krugman, too.
I commented at Naked Capitalism recently that I had no idea what the poster meant when he talked about a “partial recovery”. I find a “jobless recovery” to be equally oxymoronic.
The U-6 unemployment measure is at 17%. 7.2 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. An estimated 824,000 will be subtracted out when the Bureau of Labor Statistics does its yearly revision next February. The BLS has been much criticized for continuing to use a birth-death model (this refers to new business creation), an assumption for which the recession provided no evidence. So we are talking 8 million plus around another million between now and then or 9 million jobs lost. If you look at the A-1 tables, you can divide the civilian labor force by the total adult (noninstitutional) population and come up with the labor force participation rate (65.2%). You can also look at the increase in the adult population since the recession began (4.455 million) and apply either the most recent participation rate or the December 2007 one (66.3%), they give a number between 2.9 and 2.95 million. These are the jobs needed to be created just keep up with population growth. (If you divide by the 22 months so far of the recession, it comes out to something more than 130,000 jobs/month needed to stand still.)
Returning to the U-6 for a moment. If we apply its 17% to the civilian labor force of 154 million, we come up with a figure of 26 million. This is the number of the un-, under and marginally employed. This tells a story of much greater underutilization of labor in this country and how deep the hole we are in, much deeper than even the expanded job loss numbers show. Of course, this is why many economists create a structural unemployment rate of 5% (or nowadays even more) and only look at the U-3 because they reduce the problem and the social responsibility of business and government. Take the 15.1 million that the U-3’s 9.8% unemployment represents and suddenly we are down to 7.4 million and 4.8% to deal with. This puts the number in line with the number of jobs lost. Neat what you can do with numbers, huh?
In a George Washington post crossposted at Nak Cap recently, GW quoted some finance rentiers saying the real size of the
industrial reserve army“natural unemployment rate” is now more like 7%.Nothing like trying to normalize a criminal system by writing off more and more of the dispossessed as simply structurally superfluous people. It’s nobody’s fault, right?
I don’t think that’s possible given their population.
My dad was in CCC. Almost all his $$ went back home. It was the first time he ever got out of the dumpy inner city where he grew up and he was in Vermont. Eye opening experience. And he got paid too! He never stopped talking about it.
How could any of this be happening? Decider Bush cut taxes for himself, his family, and his cronies, just like St. Reagan would have. Cheney reminded us that the Book of St. Reagan said that deficits don’t matter. It must be all Obama’s fault.
Vote John Bush in 2012.
I think it’s as a % of GDP that China’s stim is bigger than the U.S., not per capita.
Yeah, what we need to do is cut all taxes for the ubber wealthy and pay them wealth subsidies in the hope that something trickles down. /s
Well, before you can solve a problem one must actually acknowledge that it, A) exists B) if if A, then what caused it and how do we remedy it.
If you have not availed yourself of the opportunity, please go and read the excellent article, “Buyout Firms Profited as a Company’s Debt Soared” at the NY Times website.
(If this does not get you mad, you are dead)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…..ns.html?hp
Ok, that makes more sense.
TODAY’S REPUBLICANS ARE AMERICA’S ENEMY WITHIN
Republicans ARE practicing seditious DEMAGOGUERY and anti-democracy OBSTRUCTIONISM intended to destabilize our economy for purposes of political exploitation.
Republicans AREN’T making a sincere effort to STOP the bleeding THEIR incompetent leadership and failed policies created. Instead, they’re using inflammatory lies and accusations as a smokescreen to conceal their subversive agenda, which is to cause President Obama and America to fail so they can blame Democrats for the consequences of THEIR calamitous mismanagement.
Republicans ARE preposterously professing that THEIR disgraceful political WHORING had nothing to do with the banking, real estate, stock market and employment catastrophes that resulted.
Republicans ARE trying to hamstring Democrats to prevent them from repairing the damage caused during a Republican presidency that was irresponsibly enabled by Republican Senators and Representatives.
Republicans ARE offering ridiculous arguments meant solely to disrupt and prevent progressive change. They’d rather divide America and create political gridlock than endure the political consequences of effective Democratic governance.
Republicans AREN’T the LOYAL OPPOSITION; they ARE the ENEMY WITHIN whose mercenary personal priorities have eroded their moral and ethical standards to the point that duplicity and betrayal are their preferred modus operandi.
It’s one thing to advocate their conservative beliefs; it’s another thing entirely to willfully sabotage America’s government because a successful Democratic presidency would not be vulnerable to the greed, fears and hatreds that have produced and sustained the radical Republican anti-government corporatism and anti-Christian faux theocracies that are poisoning and crippling American society.
Here’s a Democrat who knows how to talk economic fairness and common sense for the middle class.
I wonder what ever happened to him?
Of bubbles and busts and oracles and Greenspan, again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…..ns.html?hp
Buyout Firms Profited as a Company’s Debt Soared
Every step along the way, the buyers put Simmons deeper into debt. The financiers borrowed more and more money to pay ever higher prices for the company, enabling each previous owner to cash out profitably.
- EVERY OWNER EXCEPT:
Simmons’s first trip through the revolving door of private equity came in 1986. Like the latest trip, it was not a pleasant one for employees, but the buyers did just fine.
William E. Simon, a private equity pioneer and a Treasury secretary under President Richard M. Nixon, was the man with the golden touch. In 1986, his investment firm, Wesray Capital, and a handful of Simmons’s top managers acquired the company for $120 million, the bulk of which was borrowed. After selling several businesses to pay back some of the money it had borrowed, Wesray cashed out in 1989. It sold Simmons to the company’s employee stock ownership plan for $241 million — twice what it paid just three years earlier.
The deal was a fiasco for the employees. As part of the buyout, Simmons stopped contributing to its pension plan, since the stock ownership plan shares were meant to pay for the employees’ retirements. But then the bottom fell out of the housing market and Simmons, with its large debt, stumbled. Its pensions crumbled as the value of the stock plan shares plunged.
A succession of private equity buyers came and went. Merrill Lynch Capital Partners bought Simmons in 1991 for $32 million for a 60 percent stake in the company and the assumption of its debt. Merrill sold it to Investcorp, an investment group based in Bahrain, for $265 million in 1996. Two years later, Investcorp sold the company to Fenway Partners for $513 million.
- So the employees, to keep their jobs and the company they believed in, pay $121 million ($241 million total) over what was paid 3 years earlier then get screwed out of their retirements and 2 years later have to let the company go for $32 million. A loss of $209 million, not counting retirement losses.
*The frightening thing is that there are more companies out there ready to fall. Here’s the view from the Captains of Capitalism:
“THL was hardly alone in undertaking this sort of financial engineering, known as a dividend recapitalization. From 2003 to 2007, 188 companies controlled by private equity firms issued more than $75 billion in debt that was used to pay dividends to the buyout firms.
Asked whether the 2007 dividend was too much for Simmons, Mr. Schoen of THL defended the deal.
“That debt financing, which clearly spelled out to the market the use of the proceeds, was extremely well received. The securities were heavily oversubscribed,” Mr. Schoen said. “Not only did we think it was appropriate, but the market did as well,” he added.” ….“Simmons has been a cash cow. It’s made a lot of people a lot of money,” said David Perry, executive editor of Furniture/Today. “But there’s a growing question in the industry of how many more times can this be repeated. How much more juice can be squeezed out of the orange?”
* A cow who can make orange juice, now there’s an idea Wall Street can put TARP money into, let’s run it by Larry and Timmy. See it’s the system that failed not free market capitalism itself.
Not to mention, we are supposed to take care of and look out for each other. Trying to come up with some clever way to say Honeys, I’m home, anyone looking for a job or a new career, think wedding services. Florists, DJ’s, caterers, transportation, tuxedo rentals…there’s a ton of need there.
Rome had it’s “barbarians at the gates” and the U.S. has it’s homegrown barbarians. The latter will be as responsible to the eventual downfall of the U.S. as the former was to Rome.
Unemployment is high yet there are still jobs sections in newspapers. So in an environment where so many people are out of work, companies are still unable to fill positions because they are looking for who? Honestly, unless it’s a job that requires a specific skill set that’s difficult to learn, anyone can probably do any job.
Paying working girls $1000/hr doesn’t sound very economical to me.
My mom and dad, with masters’ degrees from L.S.U., got jobs in CCC, training relocated city dwellers there, and taught such life skills as growing, cooking and canning veggies, sewing and fencing and the like. The effects were much greater than the basic pay.
Mornin’ Scarecrow and Firedogs
whadda mean already ?
my own review of their work to date shows they don’t indicate much interest in anything that doesn’t provide opportunity to game 2010/2012 period
Hope will apparently perch in the soul, but only if it results in a net gain of 12 seats
Scarecrow, Although I share your frustration with where we are right now, I challenge your historical perspective. Today’s safety net is significantly better than it was when the CCC was in operation. To say otherwise is wrong.
We aren’t going to get a CCC program. But, we might be able to put together the political will for a second stimulus that was more calibrated towards creating jobs.
way back when, I posted a diary, How to Fix our Economy – All it Takes is a Help Wanted Sign
there I point out, all we need is a help wanted sign, that’s it;
The problem is that wages aren’t being matched to skills and demand. i can get a job tomorrow that requires my skill set if I’m willing to work for half what I’m making now. Replacing my job at the same income level is a problem, though. To put it mildly, I simply cannot work for half what I’m making and still be able to make ends meet (heck, it’s plenty hard enough to do on my present rate!). I have commitments to family and bills to pay. if I take a job making half as much, my only choice is bankruptcy, and these days even THAT won’t help, because the courts won’t discharge CC debt in many cases. Having a help wanted section in the local paper just means there are minimum wage jobs available.
Just remember that the engineers that were making $100K in 2007 can now get a “replacement” job at $55K (provided they aren’t too old, too experienced, etc.). Good luck meeting your obligations on THAT salary!
Don’t you think it is time for our little congress of horrors to raise the tax rate on the rich again to pay for the renewal of a country they looted?
They just don’t understand us in congress, do they?
There are many ads in the help wanted section for various schools and finance companies willing to finance that training.
We were a decent country once. We were unselfish, we were creative, we were educated, we were dreamers; America was a nation of unselfish, creative, educated dreamers, and nothing at all was impossible. Then came Reagan. Today we’re a nation of greedy, uncreative, poorly educated slobs for whom the dream has become a nightmare, for whom even the simplest task is oft either seen as impossible or mandated impossible – dismissed – by the powers in charge.
We have become a modified fascist state, one where the corporate structure owns and controls the government, where the people – individuals – are meaningless cannon fodder, a nation where human rights take a back seat to the only things that count: acquisition of money and the power money can buy. We are dying. And worst of all, we’ve not only earned the right to a slow death, we deserve it.
How sad to have watched it all happen, to have been found powerless to do anything at all to turn the tide.
Scarecrow, I missed this piece, (CCC) but it will replay soon. I’m sure it will be one of the most inspired elements of the whole (for me).
You said, “We were a decent country once.” I have been thinking exactly the same thing while watching.
While the documentary has showed the struggles (and the constant maneuvering by capitalists of all stripes), what has been impressive is the response to the parks/monuments by the people. I don’t know a lot about the current status of parks in terms of attendance, I know the parks have lost funding and have a lot of infrastructure and maintenance issues.
What sorts of projects should be funded now that jobless workers could do, if we funded them? It seems like there must be some work that would put us on a path to save energy, retrofitting homes. . .work that could be done in any community. For starters.
of course that’s what needs to be done but the term “raise the tax rate on the rich” is a non starter, the phrasing falls into their trap
we need to do this instead;
“it’s time we got back the amiddle class ssets given to the wealthy in as some kind of “economic stimulous” which has clearly failed
We did hike up Walter’s Wiggles in Zion, a set of 21 switchbacks that climbs several hundred feet towards Angel’s Landing this past summer, and it was amazing what people can accomplish if given pickaxes and shovels. Of course, that was before the American Empire ascended post-WWII, back when we knew how to make things, to do things instead of just thinking and writing about things like I’m doing here.
Why would you expect for Obama to change orientation from his demonstrated neoliberal record, without substantial external political pressure, and suddenly adopt a bottom-up rather than top-down approach to fixing the economy?
Democrats have united with Republicans to do everything possible over the past 30 years to export more jobs than are created, to encourage wanton increases in population, and to import educated foreigners when tech salaries have gotten too high.
Why would they stop now when we’re just attaining the level of serfdom they’ve dreamed of recapturing for hundreds of years?
At $55K/year, how long will it take to pay back those loans?
Also, keep in mind that if I decide to train up as an engineer, I’ll be ready in about 6 years to start work as an intern, after running up close to $80K in student loans…
this happened because we allow industry to manufacture overseas with slave and child labor and no comenserate tariff
companies need to be penalized for exporting our jobs and companies must pay living wages
hard to get that back, it has been lost since reagan, helped being lost because of clinton and then on steroids under bush, as marcos above says;
What would the wingnuts say to a CCC? If they’re willing to secede over socialized healthcare, what would they say about socialized labor?
I suggest African American task managers for southern white male employees for the New CCC. Just to see what their reaction would be… Heck, we should also subcontract management responsibilities to the Great Liberal Labor Unions ;-) Who knows better how to equitably and effectively manage American workers?
Exactly what I’m trying to get at. Companies have been using the “I can’t get employees to fill this job so I need H1-B workers” mantra for as long as I can recall, when in truth the reason they can’t get the employees is because they don’t want to pay the prevailing scale for that work!
America – the triumph of greed.
Jane has a new post up top…
fabulous work by the 8th grader in that video Scarecrow -
an Austin middle schooler made it to the National History Competition last year w/ a CCC piece, he interviewed CCC’ers at their 75th reunion – not a dry eye in the house
No one made any comparison with the safety net. Of course we have Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation. What we’re missing is an effort to put people back to work on public investment projects — because they need to be done, they’ll help the economy over time, they help the people they employ and because it’s wrong to wait for the private economy, as manipulated and corrupt as it is, to get around to putting 8 or 9 million people back to work. Even from a strict economic viewpoint, it’s a staggering loss of productivity/GDP.
The recurring theme of the National Park series is the constant battles between those who want to preserve these treasures for everyone/posterity, and those who want to exploit them for private uses now, until their gone.
What Burns is doing, I think, is reminding us about the value of public values and public investment and preservation over private greed and exploitation — and at each critical moment, there was often a single person — a John Muir, a Teddy Roosevelt, a Park ranger or biologist, who took it upon himself to save the parks. The lesson is we have to fight these battles every day, in every age — and when we don’t have champions or sympathizers in power, we take steps back and lose stuff forever.
hi scarecrow. just a quick driveby, but thought you might be interested in the employer of last resort proposals that people like randall wray, bill mitchell and some other post-keynesian economists have been making:
http://neweconomicperspectives…..antee.html
http://neweconomicperspectives…..yment.html
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.n…..#more-5286
somewhere i have some info/links on critiques of this approach too if you are interested.
warning, if you aren’t familiar with post-keynesians, the economic reasoning will probably seem quite strange. but i’m now convinced that post-keynesianism is the best macroeconomic approach around (even if there are differences of opinion/focus/insights among post-keynesians). i have lots, lots more on this but will quit for now. hope you find some of the ideas in the above links of interest.
In your post you said:
My point in mentioning how the safety net has been dramatically improved since the the CCC was operational, is that we are a more decent country today than in the 30s. Just how decent were we then to Black Americans, people with physical challenges, women in the work-place and on and on?
Yes, much work needs to be done, but remembering a time that never was isn’t going to get us there.
Uh, the safety net provisions were initiated in the New Deal and by New Deal Democrats. But I take your point that the net has been steadily improved since them.
thanks for the links. I’ll look.
I stand corrected thanks
Me, too. Billions for bankers. Pennies for commoners.
There are still sidewalks in my former hometown that have W.P.A. stamped in the cement. WPA was also a New Deal program, IIRC.
The parks system is a testament to the great work of these programs.
There’s a serene, secluded park in a neighboring state that is truly a treasure. Built with New Deal monies, it has a stone lodge, cabins, and trails. It’s far off the beaten path–no traffic, no noise, and nuttin’ but trees and clean, fresh air.
I don’t know why some programs such as these couldn’t be implemented. It’s such a win-win situation–jobs and lasting positive improvements.
Well, when you measure the economic recovery by how well the investors are doing on Wall Street–and not by how many are without jobs…it kind of shows where your priorities are, eh?
Today’s programs could do different things. Just one example, we need to retrofit and weatherize millions of homes and commercial buildings to be more energy efficient. In many cases, the energy savings would pay much/all of the costs.
Why is it important how much he spent on a prostitute? Steve McNair bought a Caddy Truck for a “freebie” and it cost him his life. In countries were prostitution is tolerated or legal (taxed, controlled, checked) its arguable they have done a better job than we have politically to push back towards “market capitalism” and have better social safety nets.
Should I also mention prostitution is CHEAPER elsewhere on the planet (and I’m not talking about Developing Countries either)?
Spitzer was a victim of a political manhunt. He stepped down, which is more than I say for Vitter and other C Streeters and of course the Governor of South Carolina.
As Max Wolf has said many times, there is no subjective change in how our Government does things. I’ve always said we’ll get “sorta” change mostly because Obama’s biggest supporters came from the Financial Services Industry.
He doesn’t owe anything directly to the Medical Services Industry but Goldman Sachs is deeply invested in it, which is why you’ll get seriously watered down Health Care Insurance Reform and why they really don’t care about loosing the debate in the media.
I’m having a hard time assessing the foundational precepts of Post-Keynesian economics.
Can you point me toward some treatment of what it sets out as it’s chief insights?
Oh, yes, I didn’t mean that we would “redo” the park program, although more parks would always be welcome. :)
The possibilities are only limited by our imaginations.
I could think of a few lasting programs, such as teaching city dwellers to grow organic food in the city; planting trees; refurbishing old, abandoned buildings for homes for the poor and homeless (learning a trade). Just about anything that could teach folks a skill or trade or new way of approaching old problems…and on…