On Dec 5, 2009, at 7:14 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> Doug had a woman from EPI on this morning. What's her name?
Heidi Shierholz.
> She outlined
> a WPA styled plan that dealt directly with job creation,
> infrastructure
> development, and some kind of relief for state budgets. The programs
> were paid for by transaction tax on short term trading. There were
> more
> elements, but I can remember them all at the moment.
http://www.epi.org/index.php/american_jobs/american_jobs_plan
> I think it's neoliberal or freemarket wisdom to use indirect means
> like
> business tax credits, home improvement tax credits, business start up
> credits, and other empty gestures.
Yup. As Heidi pointed out, the Obama admin sold its StimPak by emphasizing that it was *not* an old-fashioned public works program, but one designed to create private sector jobs. If you take their numbers on job creation and stim money spent (from Recovery.gov), you find that they've spent about $250,000 per job. Direct job creation would cost 1/4 or 1/5 as much.
> Doug and others say that job creation follows late as the economy
> improves.
That's not what I've said. In the classic business cycle, employment started growing almost immediately after the economy (measured by GDP and such) bottomed. In the recoveries of the early 90s and 00s, the job market took about a year or more to get going. I'm expecting something like that again.
Doug