Public Services Mean Jobs
Kevin Drum contemplates our bleak future:
For many years it’s looked as if we were getting closer and closer to an economy in which there flatly wasn’t enough unskilled work left to keep employment at normal levels. Stagnant median wages were the canary in the coal mine, with permanently higher unemployment coming in the future. But I dunno: maybe the future is now.
Well for one thing, this is part of the reason why we need to improve the performance of our high schools and the affordability of our colleges. Historically, each generation of Americans has been better-educated than its predecessors, shifting the skill balance in the workforce. Over the past generation that pattern’s broken down.
But another thing here is America’s pathological reluctance to put people to work providing adequate public services. I think it’s pretty uncontroversial to say that picking up trash, cleaning streets, fixing potholes, etc. are the kind of things government should be doing. It’s also clear that if you compare the United States to other countries, it’s possible for a country to have cleaner, better-maintained streets than we have. Doing better on this score wouldn’t be brain surgery and would provide low-skill jobs. And, yes, it would cost money. But the United States of America is the wealthiest society the world has ever known. It’s a bit ridiculous that we can’t repair damaged sidewalks in a timely manner. Or, rather, given that we clearly can repair damaged sidewalks, it’s ridiculous that we don’t.
And you could really go nuts with this stuff. Smaller buses could run more frequently. Libraries could stay open longer. Playgrounds could be better-maintained. Not as “stimulus” but as a permanent decision to say “hey, we’re a rich country, we should provide public services at a reasonable level.” Instead, we’ve chosen to cut taxes for the wealthiest members of the most unequal rich country on earth. And apparently we’re going to regulate yoga studios. But I think we could be doing better.
64 Responses to “Public Services Mean Jobs”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
July 10th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Matt,
Do you ever notice that in about 20% of your postings, the most obvious policy implication, the single simplest and most effective response, is to cut down on illegal immigration by the unskilled?
Just asking …
July 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Re: For many years it’s looked as if we were getting closer and closer to an economy in which there flatly wasn’t enough unskilled work left to keep employment at normal levels.
I have to disagree with this. Before the current downturn there was plenty of unskilled work– otherwise we would not have been drawing hordes of unskilled workers across our southern border. The problem wasn’t the lack of work, but the fact that it only paid crappy wages and provided no benefits.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Well for one thing, this is part of the reason why we need to improve the performance of our high schools and the affordability of our colleges.
I’m not sure there’s a lot of unfilled skilled jobs out there either. Aside from that, I agree with the post.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Re: It’s a bit ridiculous that we can’t repair damaged sidewalks in a timely manner. Or, rather, given that we clearly can repair damaged sidewalks, it’s ridiculous that we don’t
I propose that we organize the hipsters into work teams and make them repair the sidewalks, Cuba style. Perhaps that would teach the Yglesian chattering classes that civilization does not revolve around postmodernist feminist transgressiveness, but rather around physical labor.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
hey, yoga center regulators are jobs, too!
July 10th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Well for one thing, this is part of the reason why we need to improve the performance of our high schools and the affordability of our colleges.
No. This is no part of why we should improve schools. That is a totally different conversation. It shouldn’t require a college degree to sweep sidewalks, and if it did that would disqualify 70% of the population.
The conversation should revolve around matching available jobs to the existing workforce and maintaining “full” employment and “equitable” income/wealth distribution.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
What will we do once we have robots intelligent enough to repair sidewalks and write blogs? An obvious solution is to start working less.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
The Invisible Hand, given enough incentives in the form of lower top marginal rates of income tax and the abolition of death duties, will sweep the streets for us, and do a better job than any human. And because it’s invisible, we can do away with alternate-side-of-the-street parking, too.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
If you want to hire people to do basic jobs like trash collection and street cleaning, the last thing you want is to over-credential that with a college requirement. You’ll just drive the cost of things up for no good reason, and create job fields that people could do, but can’t get hired to do.
Good job Matt, another swell progressive idea that screws over the least well off segments of society…
July 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
If you want to hire people to do basic jobs like trash collection and street cleaning, the last thing you want is to over-credential that with a college requirement.
Where on earth did Matt say we should do that?
July 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Awesome! What we need are more unionized over-paid no-skill government workers that are parasitic of the productive citizenry for 20 years, and then retire with a fat pension also paid for by productive citizens! Hear hear!
July 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Steve Sailor, your comment makes no sense. Are you saying that our government is going to hire illegal aliens to provide these low-skilled public services or that our government is going to hire private companies that are going to hire illegal aliens to do these said services? Now, our government is not going to hire illegal aliens. Those private companies, given our inability to regulate the private sector, well, may be.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I agree with all of the points in your post, more less. We should have the will to improve life conditions of everyone in this country. But we do not, preferring instead theories of the good life instead of programs that help people. If education is to help, the goal should not be more information or better stats. Rather, the education system must do a better job of teaching our citizens the responsibilities that come with the liberty and comfort we take as a natural right.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Awesome! What we need are more unionized over-paid no-skill government workers that are parasitic of the productive citizenry for 20 years, and then retire with a fat pension also paid for by productive citizens! Hear hear!
My grandfather fought in WWII. After he came home, he got married, got a public-sector job (he was a fireman), and raised four children on that salary, and although they weren’t wealthy by any means, he managed to send them all to college. He was offered early retirement after…yeah, about 20, 25 years. He lives on his pension and Social Security.
Why do you hate my grandfather? Is it because he’s a veteran? A fireman? Why would you take his life away so some Wall Street douchebag clocking $2 million a year can pay marginally fewer taxes?
And what makes you so “productive” anyway? My grandfather saved the free world, then he came home and saved lives. What the fuck do you for a living that you don’t want to support people like him?
July 10th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
He didn’t. James Robertson is a liar and a troll. It is best to just ignore these people, maybe one day they will go away.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
He bviously pretends to work in some office while he’s really playing around on blogs.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Scythia-
Amen!
July 10th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Historically, each generation of Americans has been better-educated than its predecessors, shifting the skill balance in the workforce. Over the past generation that pattern’s broken down.
============================================================
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
July 10th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Matt–you know perfectly well “we” could easily put people to work on cleaner streets. But there’s a direct relationship between decades worth of crackpot righties’ bleating about high taxes (and preening themselves about “saving taxpayer dollars” as they eviscerate maintenance jobs that keep, e.g., streets cleaned up), and the dearth of workers actually keeping our public spaces clean. Don’t ever forget, Matt, as long as Republicans can afford to hire squads of illegal immigrants to keep their McMansions sparkling, they could care less about the dilapidation the rest of us have to live in the midst of.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Well, pathological reluctance since 1946. See, we had this bill called the Full Employment Bill, which would have required the government to establish full employment, backed by the government as employer of last resort. And then the red-baiting started…
Seriously, the solution is called a public employment program. If you want to learn more…
July 10th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
France has very strong public service unions – and we all know what a shitpile that country is.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I’ve lived in Europe and the US and I’d have to say that Americans just don’t get good value for money from their taxes. Until the average middle class taxpayer feels that they are, I don’t see much progress being made.
Part of this, I feel, results from liberals insisting that benefits only target the disadvantaged, whereas in Europe the benefits are available to everyone. Much like social security, when you have a program that serves everyone, rich and poor, it becomes politically untouchable.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
scythia, it’s not that – say – Brad hates your dad, but that public services are exactly the sort of thing libertarians and the GOP consistently attempt to farm out to contractors.
The theory is that the contractors aren’t leaning on their civil service brooms, and return better bang for the buck… or the same service for less.
The sorry fact is that the contractors cost less because they provide less: like the pool guy or landscape maintenance teams, the key for extracting profit is to short the service as much as possible, with low pay and few or no benes for employees.
Now, this is fine if you don’t value the work being done. The result is you get what you pay for. This was made harshly clear to me in Pima County, AZ, where public and private service territories for fire, EMT, and rubbish abutted each other within a mile of my home.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Steve Sailer writes
Do you ever notice that in about 20% of your postings, the most obvious policy implication, the single simplest and most effective response, is to cut down on illegal immigration by the unskilled?
Actually, I was going to make the different but similar point that in about 20% of his postings, the thing that Matthew Yglesias is complaining about and wants changed appears to be directly related to and aimed at specifically improving the comfort, well-being, convenience, and aesthetic pleasure of one Matthew Yglesias.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I wouldn’t be surprised if I were the only person commenting on this post that ever worked on a crew laying concrete. Now the part I did didn’t take too much skill, although it was about the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it is simply, and frankly obnoxiously, false to state that concrete finishing or the more technical aspects of getting the stuff to the right depth and level are unskilled work. Harvard graduates and MBA’s and Ayn Randers may like to think that it is, but they are mistaken.
In point of fact a concrete finisher, who is hardly the most skilled guy in the building trades, is more skilled than most of the marketing managers, HR managers, and management consultants I have worked with in the years since.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Campesino, if you’re too fucking stupid to learn to use HTML to properly quote the words of others before responding to them, then please do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
the thing that Matthew Yglesias is complaining about and wants changed appears to be directly related to and aimed at specifically improving the comfort, well-being, convenience, and aesthetic pleasure of one Matthew Yglesias.
Quite honestly, this is what public services are all about, and I think that most people should be demanding this out of their government. Instead, we have people like jmo who figure, “government can’t deliver services because of the damn liberals, so we might as well spend the money on invading Iraq.”
July 10th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Quite honestly, this is what public services are all about
No argument, but usually arguments for public services are cloaked in more general high-minded terms, or at least, are less readily identifiable as things that coincidentally mesh well with the speaker’s personal preferences, tastes, needs, and situation.
I could be wrong (though I might be right), but let me take a stab: Matthew Yglesias was walking down a city street and got yucked out that it wasn’t as clean as he’d like it to be. Hence this post. I get it already.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
How many more potholes can we fill if we “only” have four carrier battle groups?
Tell you what – throw in the fifth. Just in case we lose the first four. Say, they get ganged up on by the rest of the world’s zero carrier battle groups.
How many sidewalks can we fix if we do that? All of them? The answer is “all of them” isn’t it?
July 10th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
but let me take a stab: Matthew Yglesias was walking down a city street and got yucked out
And, like Matt, having seen some streets Europe, I’m all for improving my comfort, well-being, convenience, and aesthetic pleasure. I’d maintain a blog too, I thought it would get me there.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Part of this, I feel, results from liberals insisting that benefits only target the disadvantaged, whereas in Europe the benefits are available to everyone.
JMO: This is nonsense. It is typically American conservatives who want to turn safety net programs (when they do support such spending at all) into tightly-means tested schemes targeting only the poor. Liberals ordinarily prefer broad-based programs — the better to maintain widespread political support — and then makes things equitable on the back end via progressive taxation. You are correct to point out that Europeans tend to follow this latter course of action more so than the former, but the fact that Americans don’t do the same can hardly be attributable to liberals.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Do you ever notice that in about 20% of Steve Sailer’s postings, he uses some marginally related topic as an excuse to indulge his obsession with illegal immigration.
In the other 80%, he uses an unrelated topic as an excuse to obsess about race.
What a healthy intellectual life, that Sailer.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Re: What will we do once we have robots intelligent enough to repair sidewalks and write blogs? An obvious solution is to start working less.
Why oh Why,
That may strike you as a good idea, but it strikes me as a horrible one. Labor is intimately tied to the essence of man, and by having machines do out labor for us we kill a part of our own nature. The dream of a world of unlimited leisure time is of a peace with the dream of a world without limitation, a world without suffering, a world without virtue, a world without love: a world, in short, without the Cross.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I could be wrong (though I might be right), but let me take a stab: Matthew Yglesias was walking down a city street and got yucked out that it wasn’t as clean as he’d like it to be. Hence this post.
Yes, I can see Matt being the policy-wonk version of Andy Rooney.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Just like that idiot Newton. Good thing his silly ideas were thoroughly discredited on the basis that he only came up with them after being hit with an apple.
P.S.: Note for the stupid: No, I am not comparing Matt Yglesias to Newton. Just illustrating a particularly weird kind of ad hominem argument I’m seeing here: It’s a bizarre conclusion to jump to in the first place, but if Matt did come up with this post after noticing some dirty sidewalks, so what? Does that have bearing on whether we actually are or are not spending enough on low-skill public services? In the name of Odin’s fecund spittle, HOW?
(P.P.S.: Note for the not so stupid: Yes, I’m aware Newton probably wasn’t really hit by a falling apple. Also, Leibniz.)
July 10th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Brad at 11: funny, Sweden did this from the mid-1930s through to 1997. You know what they got? An economy in which unemployment between 1-2% was normal, and 3% was a crisis that brought down the government. We have an unemployment rate that officially is at 9.5% and unofficially is at 18.4%. Whose productive again?
Cmholm: damn right about contractors. Hence, why they establish powerful political lobbies…I mean ‘watchdog groups’…to block “force account” construction projects.
Jasper/JMO – generally, Jasper’s right that conservatives prefer targeted to universal (that’s why they like means-testing programs). However, it’s also true that during the 1960s, the Great Society liberals in the Johnson Administration thought that targeted programs for the poor would be politically savvier than universal programs.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Matt once again doesn’t understand how this would work IN PRACTICE.
Let me inform him.
Back in the 1970’s San Francisco became the laughing stock of the country when it was revealed the city paid street cleaners $18K per year to clean the streets. There was a waiting list for the job that stretched into years.
So the city decided to correct two problems at once: get people off Welfare and cut down the cost of street cleaning.
So they made Welfare recipients clean the streets in return for being allowed on Welfare. So the recipients have to get up at 3AM in the morning, meet a Department of Public Works worker at 4AM on some street somewhere in the city, are given a yellow vest, a broom and some plastic garbage bags and have to work until around 12PM or 1PM cleaning a specific street three or four days out of the week.
In other words, the city of San Francisco moved to slave labor in order to improve their image and cut costs.
This is how it would work in practice.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Regarding comment #25 by MR Gene O’ Grady
MR O’ Grady
You make an excellent point.I think of the same thing when people complain about “unskilled” workers at factories getting paid huge money for ” just tightening some screws”.
Many people in factories or construction took classes ,recieved training or learned on the job after many years.Just because they did not attend college does not make them ” unskilled”.
I think that is actually one of the main problems that we have nowdays. Back a few years ago when you had construction bosses complaining about not having enough men they were hardly ever talking about unskilled laborers.
There has always been a large supply of unskilled labor .It’s skilled labor or semi-skilled labor[like concrete finishers or plumbers] that have been in short supply.These are also the guys that you read about making good money.The average laborer is lucky to get $10 to $12 an hour.
In Baltimore you have both American and immigrant labor on construction sites.But I have to be honest and say that one reason the bosses started hiring latinos is because that many of them ARE skilled.They grew up in countries where people have to build thier own homes.They can do carpentry and lay bricks , unlike many American kids.
There are still Americans that grow up learning to use tools with their dads.But not as much as there used to be.
I am not trying to start an immigration arguement .I am simply trying to say that there is a reason that even during the economic boom years there were people out of work even as construction bosses were shorthanded.And there was a reason that latinos came over here and got jobs while many people in America never could find work.
It was not just shortage of skills either.On my sites I need people who can think for themselves.I don’t need someone who JUST follows orders.There are many good workers out there .the majority of my crew is American born [ and the 2 Salvadoreans are legal]and they are all great workers.
But I defintly can see that our society is producing too many kids that are unskilled and incapable of thinking for themselves. I would add that this a problem among whites just as much as blacks.This is not just an inner city problem.
Once again ,I liked your comment MR O’ Grady Best regards to you sir
July 10th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
I don’t think that anyone here is denying that construction jobs take skills. We’re just saying that in the majority of cases there are more efficient ways to find blue-collar workers employment than to try to extend their academic education.
Brad at 11: funny, Sweden did this from the mid-1930s through to 1997. You know what they got? An economy in which unemployment between 1-2% was normal, and 3% was a crisis that brought down the government. We have an unemployment rate that officially is at 9.5% and unofficially is at 18.4%. Whose productive again?
Well, that depends. Did any of that 98-99% employment rate consisted of make-work jobs that did not actually produce anything of value?
July 10th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Richard Steven Hack:
“how this would work IN PRACTICE.”
Ahem. The WPA employed eight and a half million workers (8.5 million different workers; the workforce maxed out at 3.5 million, but people cycled through the program) in its eight year lifespan, from 1935-1943. Before that, the Civil Works Administration put 4.25 million people to work in 3 months.
We actually do have experience doing this right.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Glaivester: well, a good Keynesian would tell you it doesn’t matter if they were digging up bottles with pound notes in them, but what the hell?
I don’t know much about the track record of the Swedish system in terms of production, but Sweden was the 2nd richest country in the world from the 50s-early 70s (when the oil crises of the 1970s really destabilized things), so it couldn’t have been that bad.
I do know that the American equivalent, the WPA, in addition to building the Golden Gate Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, the LSU football stadium, and the Lincoln Tunnel, constructed 570,000 miles of rural roads and 67,000 miles of city streets, built or improved 125,000 public buildings, built 78,000 new bridges, 480 new airports and 226 new hospitals, etc. etc. (See Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism, p. 113-115) I’d say that’s pretty good value for money.
All this, mind you, with a workforce that was 70% unskilled, and which by design used the most basic hand techniques to maximize per-project employment.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:21 am
I agree with much of what MR Yglesias has to say about public service jobs .But I would like to make two points.
ONE
I hate to say this but we have a lot of trash in the streets of Baltimore.This is not because we do not have enough public employees.It is because we have too many people throwing trash on the streets.
I live on a small sidestreet and I will clean my block in the morning and there will be more trash in the street in a few hours .I can not tell you how many times I have seen people walk by trashcans and simply drop their trash on the ground.People do need to take responsibility for their actions and for their neighborhoods.
TWO
I grew up in the City of Greenbelt MD which was completly built by the WPA.So I grew up knowing about the WPA and the CCC and I grew up respecting them. My business card actually has a photo of a WPA worker swinging a sledgehammer [ I do interior demolition].
But these kind of programs would not just be blocked by the usual right wing kooks.They would also be blocked by the labor unions who would insist that every laborer hired was garunteeed a job for life. It would be almost impossible to get the unions to agree to the government hiring people for ,say ,$10 to $12 an hour on a temporary basis
I am not anti- union.I was actually a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers and Teamster unions when I was younger.They serve a good purpose.
But our public workers unions have pushed things too far.They almost seem to be asking for a backlash .
July 11th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Regarding Comment #39 BY Glaivester
Glaivester
I hope you don’t think my comment was simply me taking offence at being unskilled.Especially since the kind of work that I personally do is basicly considered unskilled.
My point is that you can’t simply give an unemployed person a skilled saw and automaticly expect them to be able to be a carpenter.
My point was also that there are all sorts of skills.This may sound strange but many young people do not have the social skills to dig ditches.Even when digging ditches you still have to show up for work on time.And you have to be able to spend at least 8 hours a day without drugs and alchohol .And also be able to work 8 hours with other people and not get into a fight with them.
These may seem to be very simple skills .But sadly many people are lacking them.
The problem isn’t that too many young people are only qaulified to dig ditches.The sad truth is that many of them are incapable of even doing that.
Skills and knowledge are great .But the school system does need to teach some of it’s students how to show up on time and how to behave.
Construction has always been a loosely structured enviroment.And it’s always been rough around the edges to put it mildly.But some of the behavior that i have seen in the last 10 years has blown my mind.
Best regards to you Glaivester and I apoligise if I did not make my point clear enough. I am not too eloquent as you can tell.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Regarding my comment 43 I apoligise. Full of typos as usual. First sentence should have said
“I hope you don’t think that my comment was simply me taking offence at being CALLED unskilled”.
The sentence didn’t make sense without the word called.
My apoligies Glaivester
July 11th, 2009 at 1:05 am
Pete from Baltimore,
Thanks for your insightful comments. You make more good points in this one thread than Mr. Yglesias makes in a whole year of blogging. Building a house takes a hell of a lot of skill, and is not easy work. Indeed, a healthy America would be one with fewer investment bankers, advertisers, salesmen and bloggers, and one with more construction workers, road crews, small farmers and fish farmers.
July 11th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Speaking as a member and elected official of the UAW, I don’t think there actually would be a problem. The WPA actually was unionized – by the UAW’s WPA Welfare Department – and they didn’t break the program, rather they helped lobby for the program and improved wages and working conditions.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:35 am
Wajdi Mouawad rencontre le public à 16h à l’école d’art
July 11th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Nationwide, cities and states are having horrible problems with funding public employee pensions. MY comes up with the bright idea of doubling down and hiring more public employees when we can’t pay for the ones we have now.
Here’s a story from California
http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/1965212.html
And another from Pennsylvania
http://blogs.phillyburbs.com/news/intelligencer/opinion-state-pension-crisis-demands-more-than-talk/
Google public pension crisis and you get over 1.7 million hits.
MY’s approach to public policy makes drunken sailors look like models of fiscal restraint
July 11th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Re: Part of this, I feel, results from liberals insisting that benefits only target the disadvantaged, whereas in Europe the benefits are available to everyone.
What kind of benefits are you talking about? Most obviously healthcare of course and liberals here have been fighting forever to get universal healthcare. But does Europe give out the equivalent of foodstamps to everyone? And I would suspect the European unemployment checks only go to the unemployed, not people with jobs.
Re: The sorry fact is that the contractors cost less because they provide less
Actually, contracting often ends up costing more. Not only must one pay the going rate for the workers themselves, but then there’s a cut (often substantial) that the contracting agency takes. Pay close attention to any state that has privatized services. Sooner or later it will come out that the state is spending more money than it would if it just hired some people on its own to do the work.
Re: In other words, the city of San Francisco moved to slave labor in order to improve their image and cut costs.
How is this slavery? I assume the welfare recipients are free to pack up and move to Seattle, San Antonio or Middle-of-no-Wheresville if they don’t like it. Also, they are being paid for their work, which slaves usually are not. Nor do I think the city of San Francisco would be able to sell these people to the city of Los Angeles. I am not saying I support programs like this but calling this slavery is ridiculous hyperbole, on the scale of Christianists who cry persecution when someone is rude to them or professes opposition to their politics.
Re Did any of that 98-99% employment rate consisted of make-work jobs that did not actually produce anything of value?
If someone was willing to pay the people to do the work then, by definition, it had the value of that payment.
Re: But the school system does need to teach some of it’s students how to show up on time and how to behave.
That learning doesn’t come from scools (although they can help). That learning must come from families.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:48 am
This was all the result BS “Neoliberal” economic policy which has dominated our political scene for thirty years:
http://www.econocataclysm.com/how-did-this-happen/
There was NO WAY American labor was going to be able to compete with slave labor in Communist China. NO WAY. We literally can’t afford the pay cut, ESPECIALLY with housing bubbles, stock bubbles, this bubbles, that bubbles, rising gas prices and all the rest.
This time, we need to just throw the fat cats up against a wall and shoot them on national television.
JR
July 11th, 2009 at 10:48 am
It’s pretty established that the 1906 and 1989 San Fran earthquakes and the Great Fire of Chicago all resulted in cities that were primed for redevelopment along more contemporary lines.
If there had been better fire departments, this wouldn’t have happened.
So we just get rid of all services and watch our cities flourish.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I really appreciate the comments from Pete from Baltimore (#38, 43). I’d just like to add that I think schools are not solely to blame for kids not knowing that being on time is important – this should be taught at home, by parents.
Regarding Matt’s comments about other countries having better streets, I think there are two issues: quality of construction/maintenance and cleanliness. Many European countries have great highways(ex: autobahns), but I have been struck by how much graffitti, dog sh-t and garbage is on major European streets vs. in the US cities that I have visited. Maintenance- definitely reflects govt action/inaction. For cleanliness, I think the best countries are going to be those with a country-wide culture of personal responsibility (ex. in the US, people pick up after pets). It’s not always about having government workers cleaning up.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:47 am
ElisaA
but I have been struck by how much graffitti, dog sh-t and garbage is on major European streets vs. in the US cities that I have visited.
Ah, see your problem is probably that you’re not comparing (a) a representative, broad sampling of U.S. city streets with (b) European streets an American tourist would use to go from his hotel to the clubs/restaurants district and back.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Re Did any of that 98-99% employment rate consisted of make-work jobs that did not actually produce anything of value?
If someone was willing to pay the people to do the work then, by definition, it had the value of that payment.
Let me rephrase that: Did it produce anything of value to anyone other than the value that the government gets from having one more person dependent on it?
It’s one thing to hire someone to do a necessary public service. It’s another to hire someone to do a make-work project that has no purpose other than creating a job; it is essentially nothing more than welfare; so it amounts to reducing “unemployment” by calling people on welfare “employed.”
My point is that creating jobs just for the sake of creating jobs is bad policy; if one wants to argue that these jobs produce useful services, that is certainly a different matter.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
All worthless make-work jobs. You can tell, because they were paid for with tax money, and that’s all you need to know to declare someone’s labor worthless.
And also too, we should privatize the roads. Then, performing exactly the same repairs would have value.
See how that works?
July 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
…because the financial meltdown wiped out their pension funds.
But let’s not mention that; so much more fun to blame all our problems on the extravagant incomes of people who lay asphalt for the DPW.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
what about taxidermy? people love animals
July 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Luke – that’s a good argument for establishing broad re-development plans every decade, not eliminating the fire department. Think how much better the transformation would have gone without the huge loss in capital and lives.
ElisA- it’s a minor point, but American personal responsibility for picking up after dogs is a recent development, spurred by the introduction of hefty fines for not doing so. So govt. regulation matters too.
July 11th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Regarding comment #49 by JonF and comment#52 by ElisaA
Thank you both for your comments.I do agree with both of you about parental responsibility.I feel the same way when people blame the schools for kids low grades. You can’t force kids to learn.The kids do have to take some responsibility for their grades.
But if the schools can’t force kids to learn ,they can defintly set concrete rules about attendance.
I remember reading an article about a high school in my area where 60 percent of the students missed 20 days or more a year.As far as i am concerned this means that 60 percent of them could not hold on to a job.Most companies barely put up with 10 absences let alone 20.
This is why i singled out schools . Because attendance is not abstract or hard to quantify. If you miss a day you miss a day ,period.
I would be willing to bet that attendance is the main reasons for people being fired [ fired being different from being laid off] .
As I said, I do basicly agree with both of yours point.Best regards to both of you, JonF and ElisaA
July 11th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Regarding comment #49 by JonF
MR JonF
I would agree with most of your points.But I would not totally agree with your comment about contracting out .In many cases you are correct in that it costs more money to contract out work.But in certain cases it can make sense.
I have a friend who runs a small construction company like I do.And he sub contracts everything out.I have told him that i think that this is foolish because he loses control of qaulity.Not to mention the fact that he makes less money if he did the work himself.
But on the other hand I occassionally sub contract out small parts of my jobs when it makes sense.It makes more sense for me to sub something out if it requires a machine that i do not own and that i usally do not use.Or, if I want a cinderblock wall built ,i can do it myself.But i usally hire a guy that does it better and quicker than me.This saves me time and money in the long run.
I think that sub contracting of government services should be looked at on a case by case basis.
I do think that the main problem with sub contracting of government services is the tremendous potential for corruption and favoritism.
As always best regards to you MR JonF
July 11th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
JonF,
But does Europe give out the equivalent of foodstamps to everyone?
No, but generous job protections are available to all, as is free daycare, everyone gets a check for each child reguardless of income, etc. The most popular programs are available to all.
I had assumed you knew that….
July 11th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Re: I had assumed you knew that
Certain benefits make sense only for certain situations (unemployment benefits for example). Others, like healthcare and retirement, should be universal. I think you will find that American liberals have a good sense of what should be what there, and they will usually fight for universal benefits where that is appropriate. The fact that we do not have universal healthcare, for example, is certainly not the fault of American liberals.
Re: But on the other hand I occassionally sub contract out small parts of my jobs when it makes sense.
Contracting can indeed make sense and the private market (especially at the small business level; less so at the large corporate) has good judgement of when this is true. The contracting out of govermment services however usually is a political plum for favored supporters and ends up costing the public more than if the work were simply done by government workers since someone is usually skimming a fat profit off the top. At the coporate level “temping” was a bit of a fad in the 90s, the equivalent of this decade’s outsourcing. Like outsourcing now it was much overused and ended up costing many firms more money than they would otherwise have spent.
July 11th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
The fact that we do not have universal healthcare, for example, is certainly not the fault of American liberals.
Europe, and its citizens, in the aftermath of WWII were impoverished. The legislation that was passed, wasn’t passed to help the poor, it was passed to help “workers” which in the aftermath of war, was almost everyone. In the US the major postwar legislation came about as part of the war on poverty – a program not designed to help “workers” but specifically the poor. By targeting this group, and neglecting the middle class, liberals robbed their programs of crucial public support. Right or wrong many voters view universal healthcare as a program to reduce their healthcare in order to provide care to the lazy and ignorant.
In Europe, programs were targeted at helping everyone, rather than just the poor and as such garner much more broadbased support.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Re: Did it produce anything of value
Value is purely subjective. Nothing comes into this world stamped with Heaven’s Seal of worth. Value is what we make of it. If someone is willing to pay x.xx$ for a given good or service then that is what it is worth (at least to the individuals involved in the transaction).
Re: the US the major postwar legislation came about as part of the war on poverty
The War of Poverty was a 60s thing. Probably the most significant program in the immediate post-war period was the GI Bill and that was available to people of all income levels, provided they had served in the military (which a great many men had in WWII). The 60s poverty programs are the sorts of programs that are indeed targeted and rightfully so toward the poor. Europe has these types of programs too. It would make little sense to provide the middle class or wealthy people with food stamps after all. Medicare however is available across income levels. Again, the lack of certain worthwhile universal social programs in the US is no fault of American liberalism, which has fought for such programs. Unlike Europe where the Far Right immolated itself in WWII, the US has a huge Social Darwinist rightwing that fights tooth and nail against such things.