How To Put America Back To Work

Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, 4.5 million of them for over a year, and millions more are no longer counted because they've given up looking for work.

The American economy is slowing and could collapse because of the ripple affect of having so many people jobless. The unemployed don't buy houses or cars or go on vacations, eat in restaurants, buy furniture or pay for other goods and services that keep the economy in gear. There is also a terrible psychological impact from being out of work, for in America a person without a job is made to feel worthless.

During the Great Depression the government created programs such as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corp to put people to work. These programs restored peoples' pride building some of  America's infrastructure.

Here's how we put America back to work today. Create a government program to rebuild America's cities and its infrastructure, the thing our government claims it will do in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rebuild the crumbling highways, bridges and schools and launch other construction projects that will put vast numbers of people to work.

But that's not enough. Expand our educational system with the well educated who are out of work to train huge numbers of people to do jobs vital to Americans, such as sharply increasing the number of doctors, nurses and medical staff to service the government's new massive health care program but also to expand Medicare as our population ages. To attract students, issue scholarships and stipends.

Our public educational system, once the best in the world is faltering and at the high school level dropouts are endemic in our inner cities. Let's recruit and train teachers and motivate them so that they in turn will motivate their students. It is from a well qualified work force we encourage companies to build more of their products here.

Entrepreneurs have long been America's job engine so set up a pool of capital for entrepreneurs to launch or expand businesses, a program run by business experts who will select viable projects and offer skills those small businesspeople may lack.

If you think the government doesn't have the money to do these things, you're right! Except it finds the money to bailout grossly mismanaged companies and to pay for one of the biggest jobs programs in the world, U.S. military spending. For 10% of the $183 billion it gave AIG, it could fund the entrepreneurial capital pool. Instead, this week the Fed committed to spend untold billions of dollars to keep buying more Treasury Bills which will accomplish what?

Call this proposal Project Rebuild America or Project Hope or whatever, but it's long overdue! Real leadership is taking bold action when America most needs it, as President Roosevelt did during the Great Depression and as he did in converting our nation to fight World War ll. Today, if President Obama and Congress can find the will to act, soon millions of unemployed Americans will have jobs, a paycheck and their pride back and our nation will be a far better place because of it.

Dick