Now that we are moving into a new administration and a new Congress there are new debates on how to solve the many problems we face, including unemployment
The first thing I would propose is a major public works program that would be on par with those of the New Deal. There is almost nobody out there who disputes the fact that our infrastructure is a mess. For example I’m willing to bet every one of us drives on roads that are in desperate need of repair.
Those roads are just the tip of the iceberg with regard to our needs and I could probably fill a dozen pages with links to examples of the mess we have out there. Bridges, roads, dams, waterways, etc are in many cases decades old and are crumbling.
In my own region we have miles of levees which protect some of the richest farmland in the world. Yet these levees are in many cases in serious danger of collapse and are quite vulnerable to earthquakes.
Should they collapse this could bring about a disaster to rival New Orleans, with millions left without drinking water and possibly thousands of acres of farmland left useless, which could cause serious food problems. This is only one example of the impact of a failing infrastructure.
Over the past few years the quake and tsunami in Japan and the earthquake and hurricane along the East coast also remind us that our nuclear power plants are aging and in need of major retrofitting.
And of course in many cases the existing roads, dams, water and power grids, etc are not anywhere close to enough for the growing population.
So my first proposal would be for a huge investment in infrastructure repair and expansion program. According to the link above we need to spend at least $ 2.2 trillion dollars over the next 5 years just to get things caught up.
I would leave the specifics of how much to spend to the experts in terms of exactly how much to budget but something along the lines of this amount would seem proper and could serve as a replacement for any new ‘stimulus package’.
In addition it would be an area of spending that is both clearly needed and also a clear function of the government.
As part of this proposal I would also recommend that a panel of real experts be established to determine where the money is spent. It should not be caught up in politics and spent where the politicians want, but rather spent where it is needed.
The infrastructure projects would provide work for a lot of people but it would obviously not provide enough work for everyone so we would also need to find ways to stimulate job expansion.
To that end I would propose extending the payroll tax cut for two more years but I would limit the cut to the *employer* side. For those who don’t know, for every dollar an employee pays in Social security and Medicare tax, the employer pays another dollar in tax.
The current cut is aimed at the employee side of the equation and while that is certainly a nice savings for the worker it really does not do much to reduce the costs to the employer. So I would push to have the cut extended but put on the employer side.
Also to assist in job development I would propose is to explore having a holiday on overseas income for businesses.
Right now businesses have as much as $ 1.5 TRILLION dollars in income being kept overseas but they are unwilling to bring it home because the government would take a big chunk of it away.
So I’d like to find a way to bring it in back but I would not want to see that money simply socked away or used to buy a new corporate jet. So I would include a proviso that any money brought back would have to be spent on expanding the business in some way, it could not be paid out to investors or used for some non productive purpose.
Hopefully the above proposals would help to bring out new jobs, but one other problem we have right now is that often the starting jobs do not pay a very high amount. When you factor in the costs of work (clothes, lunches out, travel to work, day care, etc) it is often the case that the job pays less than unemployment.
So I would propose expanding the unemployment program to allow it to pay a certain amount to people with jobs in order to help defray those job costs. Obviously this could not go on forever and we want to help provide a basic living but not one comfortable enough to last forever.
The idea would be for the new worker to have time to be on the job long enough to begin climbing the ladder again and to get raises, which would render the extra benefits unneeded.
I would also encourage an expansion in jobs training programs, perhaps in conjunction with the extended unemployment/underemployment benefits to help those who have lost jobs get the skills needed for new ones.
This program could include a combination of federal funding for programs as well as tax breaks to employers who provide the training themselves.
Now to pay for all of the above we’d likely need to start eliminating some of the income tax cuts of the last decade, at least with regard to higher income employers. I don’t think that a modest increase would prevent these earners from continuing to invest and we could couple the income tax hikes with higher deductions for investment in job production.
This would mean that if the higher income earner did put their money into job creation that they’d see less of a tax increase.
These are just a few ideas which I think could help to bring things back but I am doubtful the President will propose them because each of the proposals would prompt opposition from one extreme or the other.
The infrastructure proposal would find protests from both sides. Hard core conservatives wouldn’t like the ‘big guvmint program’ while hard core liberals would be upset at the retrofit of nuclear plants benefiting big nasty corporations/evil polluters.
The payroll tax cut would upset liberals for not going to the worker while the upper income tax hike would anger conservatives.
And so on and so on.
Of course it is always possible that the President will take a bold step and that both sides in Congress will unify behind what is best for the country. Then again it is also possible Obama will simply read this post as his proposal (but I’m not holding my breath).
Indeed the most likely event is that liberals and conservatives here on TMV will tell me how bad my proposals are when they don’t fit their own agenda (which is fine, I love TMV debate but you get my point).
Read more at http://themoderatevoice.com/121457/the-jobs-speech-obama-should-but-wont-give/#FCrujJCaOuGLHiV3.99