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Originally Posted by Danzig
i read the article listed above, as well as a few others yesterday, trying to find more info. so far, unsuccessful in finding any real details.
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I saw more detail, but can't remember if I saw it on the Progressive Caucus website, or Schakowsky's website ... it's not a bill yet, it's a plan, there are certainly not well-fleshed out areas.
But no, the vast majority of jobs are not superficial, temporary make work jobs.
Are they "not permanent" construction jobs, etc? Yes. But they are good, "hard" and needed jobs, not created out of thin air jobs. They will leave permanent benefits.
(I read the other day where most of the eastern logging industry of today is greatly dependent upon trees planted during FDR WPA projects)
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and like i said, it's all well and good to say hire more fire, police, teachers..but as has been asked, what happens in a couple of years? if it's not permanent funding, it's not a good plan imo, especially when one wonders where the future tax goes. haven't seen details on that either.
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But the government doesn't want to permanently hire hundreds of thousands of new workers. That would be crazy. And GOP-TV (Faux news) would call that a "socialist, communist takeover"
The whole point of stimulus and WPA type deals is to get the economy through a rough patch without totally cratering out. Right now, the last of the original stimulus is gone, on the local levels. The last QEII is gone. The economy is reacting partially to that (although greatly to Europe, and alot due to automated computer buy-sell programs - look at the daily swing chart)
The states are laying off teachers, firefighters, policemen, can't do country and state road repairs, etc.
The government picks this tab up temporarily, and the cash put back into the local economy, and the taxes, local and federal, keeps the locals afloat so hopefully they can go back to where they were in the future, picking up the costs of some of the permanent jobs.
Remember 1937?
We are repeating the mistakes of the Depression. Hoover tried some light stimulus things (like the first stimulus package we had), then the economy had an anemic slow growth (just like we had) - then FDR and everyone became deficit crazy (like we are right now) then the economy tanked in the Depression due to the deficit hawks.
You don't worry about long-term debt during a recession/depression. You worry about your immediate problem, joblessness and anemic financial picture.
You carry the debt - notice that our interest rates have never been lower - while throwing that cheap, cheap money into the economy to keep it afloat.
And as interest rates are so low now, better the government borrows the money to fix all our federal highways - leaving better infrastructure while putting people to work - than doing it more expensively in the future (and killing more people while bridges just fall down)
What happens when these 1-3 year jobs expire? Hopefully the economy will carry it strongly. It's like giving you IV fluids while you can't eat or drink due to GI tract surgery - after a few days, you're healed enough that you can take that over yourself. The fluids are not permanent, they are temporary to keep you alive.
And the increased taxes will then go to paying down the deficit. Jobs first, stimulus first, long-term debt later when the economy is strong. That's exactly the plan that
has worked in the past in this country, most recently during the Clinton years.
"trickle down" has not worked. In fact, in the face of 10 years of massive tax cuts and capital gains tax cuts, the economy lost hundreds of thousands of jobs and went into recession.
Tax cuts to job "creators" does not work to stimulate an economy.
For example, you can say the temporary census hiring was only "temporary", but it made a noticable blip in the unemployment numbers for several months, and during those months people were not unemployed and starving. Yes, the jobs were over, and they had to go back to unemployment - or nothing - but temporary help isn't worse than no help at all, it's better than starving.
These are real people we are talking about - when you don't have money, when you are bottomed out, you literally yes, can't buy food and you starve or become homeless, etc.
We don't do "stimulus" to "help the economy", we do it to keep our fellow citizens alive.