Real economic recovery: a national jobs program
The debate over the modest proposed raise in the minimum wage has revealed the deep resistance to any structural economic reform that would challenge the current (and growing) levels of poverty and underemployment. The stock argument put forth is that raising wages for low-income workers will simply lead to higher unemployment. This same argument has been used every time since the minimum wage laws were introduced during the New Deal era. The dire predictions have never been borne out, and yet the argument resurfaces each and every time a proposed increase in the minimum wage gets on the Congressional agenda. The capture of the political agenda by the right-wing and their “centrist Democrat” enablers has taken the equally important concept of a national jobs program off the table.
After the political trench warfare of the last five years, the fact that the Obama Administration had proposed the “Obama-Biden Plan” following the 2008 election has already gone down the memory hole. The Obama-Biden emergency plan proposed a Jobs and Growth Fund to help ensure that in-progress and fast-tracked infrastructure projects were funded, after the collapse of state and local budgets following the 2008 crash. The plan was a Keynesian investment in urgent, high-priority infrastructure that would generate capital deployment and foster job creation to boost our economy in the near-term, and enhance U.S. competitiveness in the longer term.
The Obama-Biden plan would have increased funding for federal workforce training programs to create a green energy youth jobs program to invest in connecting disadvantaged and minority youth to the needed work of upgrading America’s energy infrastructure, house by house. The original plan included creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation. That never happened.
By the time that the plan went through the Congressional sausage grinder, only a fraction of the needed money was allocated. Paul Krugman was right: the so-called “stimulus bill” was about half the size needed in order to jump-start the stalled economy, and much of that was squandered on tax breaks for corporations in order to get Republican votes. The price we, as a nation, have paid for the failure to act decisively in the Great Recession is a lingering economic malaise and a loss of public confidence in our capacity to act collectively to solve major issues.
It seems cynical, but it looks like that was the Republican long-range game plan. A historic opportunity to turn a crisis into a moment of transformation was lost.
House Speaker John Boehner now says raising the minimum wage is “bad policy” because it will lead to job losses. Every measure proposed to raise the wage floor and provide wider access to jobs for the long-term unemployed is immediately assailed as a “job-killer” by the national Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party and the conservative media network. These same forces also identify unions, workplace safety regulations, environmental regulations, and the Affordable Care Act as “job killers.”
Despite the reams of economic studies that have shown the real advantages of raising the wage floor, the same shop-worn zombie arguments keep resurfacing. They are kept alive by the Koch brothers and their fellow plutocrats pouring money into Washington “think tanks” like the Americans for Prosperity and the faux grass-roots entities that they spin off. We have devolved to the state of permanent grid-locked political decadence. It’s no wonder that the public has lost confidence in the political process.
The deep structure of the American “free market” system masks a dependency on the welfare state to provide a tax-payer backstop for low-wage corporate employers, allowing them to privatize the gains for the owners, managers, and shareholders and socialize the losses that their inadequate wages and benefits impose on their workers and the rest of society.
There is a similar dynamic at work that precludes consideration of a national jobs program. The masters of the “free market” system do not want full employment, because that would create upward pressure on wages in the private sector. They prefer tight labor markets that keep wages low and suppress unionization by keeping workers desperate for any job and fearful of rocking the boat by standing up for their labor rights.
A national jobs initiative should, along with an increase in the minimum wage, be a key objective of the progressive movement. The national jobs initiative would supply a job to anyone who wants one, doing the work that this country needs to get done in infra-structure development, environmental remediation, home energy upgrades, childcare, and eldercare. America has done this before. FDR established the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to provide millions of jobs for desperate men and women during the Depression. The government serves as the employer of last resort, guaranteeing a job and skills training for anyone who wants to work.
The political challenge is to get the resources necessary to fund this initiative. When 400 individuals have a net worth equal to the bottom half of the entire American population, it’s pretty obvious where the money will come from. We will have to tax the top 1 percent at significantly higher rates to fund this social good. That’s what FDR did in that era of crisis. We are in a crisis now.
Imagine what a sea change in social relations this would create. Instead of berating the unemployed for failing to win the rigged musical chairs game of the private sector, the long-term unemployed would have the dignity and the security that even a modestly paid job provides. If someone were chronically unemployed, the social question would be: “Why are you not working? There’s a job for you if you want it.” That’s the America I would like to live in. That’s a worthy goal for the progressive movement.
