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Date Posted: 08:50:54 01/26/09 Mon
Author: -S.
Subject: A great idea from the 1930s.
In reply to: Schlud 's message, "Re: Doesn't do you any good if you can't get a loan from your bank." on 20:35:30 01/25/09 Sun


That's a great analogy.

Here's something I heard not long ago, along similar lines, that I think would be so helpful today. It happened in the 1930s....


Shortly after FDR took office in 1933, he started the WPA, to give government jobs to the unemployed. During the Depression, unemployment in the US had gone as high as 25%, obviously a disaster. So FDR used federal tax money to put people to work. But not in the way you might think.

He set it up so that 90% of the money had to go for labor- almost nothing for materials. As a result, if you go around the country there are all these signs of the WPA still in existence- in the form of really well made buildings and other infrastructure. For example, in all the national parks around the country today are these amazing buildings- made entirely of local materials. Like lodges in national parks with foundations of locally quarried fieldstone and logs from local forests. It was all completely labor intensive, resulting in incredibly long lasting hand-made edifices.
Another legacy of the WPA is a collection of amazing murals painted by American artists, painted on public buildings across the country. Again, this is all labor intensive, the lion's share of the money going to labor required to create the murals.

FDR did this because he wanted nearly all the money to go for jobs. For the people to build and make these things- who would intern spend the money in their local economy. He got the maximum result with the funds in this way. If he had just used the money to buy fancy material, it would not have been spread around as much to the people who needed it- and it would not have stayed in the local economy.

Contrast this with what the Bush Administration did last year- the *exact opposite*. By mailing out "stimulus" checks to people, it all went directly to pay bills or for people who could afford it- buying more crap from China. What good did that do? If people run right out and buy more consumer goods- you might as well just send the money to China and avoid the middleman, except that people wound up with Chinese goods. How did that help? It didn't. It didn't do shit.

I know that unlike Bush, Obama likes to read History and really likes to learn from it. (As I side note, I just heard that Doris Kearns Goodwin, widely known as one of the best presidential historians alive today- was floored when she got a call from Obama wanting to talk to her about the book he had just read, her new book about Lincoln. Wow.) I've heard that Obama has studied FDR. I can only hope that he's smart enough to learn from the past- and set up something like the WPA. Most importantly, I would be heartened if he *designated most of the money for labor instead of materials*.

It seems to me that if the government gave out vouchers to buy cars, it would have the same effect. The only wrinkle would be in figuring out what constitutes, an "American Car". (Is a Tennessee-built Xterra less American than a GM car made in Canada?)

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