Why Not Use Remaining Stimulus $$$ to DIRECTLY Create Jobs?

[demwing]

Of the $787 billion allocated for the Stimulus, only about $210 billion has been delivered.

Approximating the figures, $200 billion in tax benefits are still standing, as are $225 billion in contracts, grants and loans, as well as another $150 billion in entitlements. That's about $575 billion, all told.

The site claims 640,000 jobs have been created/saved as a result, but stop to think on that for a moment...

If you want to look at the stimulus strictly from an employment perspective, we have spent $210 billion on 640,000 jobs, at a value of $331,000 per job.

Why don't we take a page from FDR and directly create some damn jobs in this country. If we created forestry jobs, or road and bridge reconstruction, or cleaning up New Orleans, or any variety of social programs that would put people directly to work, we could hire 1.5 million people, at a rate of $30k per year, and keep them all employed on a five year contract - total cost = $225 billion, which is exactly what is left in the "contracts, grants, and loans" category. How convenient!

How positive of an impact would that have on the US economy?

How positive of an impact would that have on the US morale?

Oh, and by the way, let's offer those 1.5 million workers Medicare E, and show the country how well it would work.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. That would actually help people and helping people = socialism

[demwing]

10. Then maybe people would start to soften their unnatural hatred of all things "social"

for another generation.

[liberal N proud]

2. Do you really think the GOP and M$M is going to let that happen.

Do you really think they will allow all the hard work of the bu$h years, destroying the middle class go to waste?

Unless Obama does it by Special Order, I don't see the blue dogs and the GOP allowing such things to happen. The M$M will fight it with everything they have.

[demwing]

5. Let them rail. Will the American people turn down the jobs?

And when we start seeing in real terms that the GOP and the MSM doesn't give a shit about whether we work or not, about whether we take pride in ourselves as productive citizens, then the public will turn on them like hungry dogs fighting over a scrap of meat.

[liberal N proud]

12. Some want to turn down health care

These ARE idIological morons.

[demwing]

14. yeah, sadly true

but jobs are a different story

[butterfly77]

21. Which is what they have been doing all along..

they can't wait until he unveils what he will do with the rest of the stimulus package. They run on television everyday lying about it as though they have been spent already.

[DJ13]

3. The stimulus money is a jobs program designed to

save Democratic Congress members jobs in 2010.

Thats why it was scheduled to delay much of the spending until early 2010.

[xchrom]

6. cause the people couldn't use it sooner --

and we couldn't be in 'awe' like we would be if the money were spent just before.

i hate bribery.

[skipos]

4. I like the idea of hiring people to fix New Orleans

Hire people to fix up Detroit while they are at it.

[demwing]

7. YES. Inner-city reconstruction

thats exactly what the money should be spent on, and get double bang for your bucks.

[sandnsea]

8. FDR's Unemployment Rate was higher than 10%

They put tons of money directly into jobs, teachers, highway construction, weatherizing buildings and homes, alternative energy products.

You cannot just pull the money away from unemployment benefits and food stamps and social security, no matter how much you put into jobs.

You sound like a teabagger frankly.

They will scream about jobs but oppose both the government creating jobs directly AND the government helping business create them vis a vis the auto industry bail-out.

We're in remarkably good shape considering there was a complete banking crash.

[demwing]

11. What the fuck are you talking about "pull money away from unemployment benefits and food stamps"

There are already $225 billion in allocated, unspent funds, earmarked for contracts, grants, and loans. Maybe I missed the memo, but when did we start using those funds for food stamps?

And take your tea bagger insult home, it's silly and beneath you.

[sandnsea]

19. You dumped all the funds together

in order to come up with your $330,000 per job figure.

Where do you think that entitlement money is going?

[demwing]

27. Only to get a rounded costs per job already created

not to create future jobs. The Recovery doesn't specify which funds created jobs and which did not...

But I see your point, so lets only take the 52.1 billion spent on Contracts, Grants, and Loans, and divide by the number of jobs saved/created - 640,321. thats $81,364.43 per job. IF the numbers are legit. Still, its not the best value for our dollar.

Even if it takes more than $30,000 to pay a person $30,000 a year, it doesn't have to take much. Let's say you have to hire a few thousand clerks to do the job. Pay them the same as you pay the other new hires, and include them in the "new jobs created" category. Or, reduce the number of claerks by 1/3, and ncrease their salary by 50%. Do the same for some Forman jobs. In the end, you get 1.4 million new jobs instead of 1.5 million.

I think the country would be good with that.

[sandnsea]

31. Recovery.gov

Contracts, Grants and Loans. Yes, that is the money that creates jobs.

You haven't calculated any benefits or FICA or unemployment or workmens comp.

You haven't calculated the cost of, say, concrete to build a bridge or asphalt to pave a road.

Here is a map of recovery projects in San Francisco alone. The problem is most people spend their time listening to negative nellies rather than finding out what is really going on. If you don't like that that sounds like a teabagger, well, then stop doing that.

http://tinyurl.com/ygfcrnm

[demwing]

33. So call me a teabagger, it just makes you look reactionary.

In the meantime, read here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=atB_YDNpdKiI

Obama Administration Accelerating Review of Ways to Boost Jobs
By Kate Andersen Brower and Roger Runningen
Nov. 6 (Bloomberg)

Obama and his advisers will within a matter of weeks review ideas for adding to the $787 billion stimulus passed earlier this year, an administration official said. Previously the president’s aides said they wanted to wait for the full impact of the earlier stimulus before taking additional action.

“My economic team is looking at ideas such as additional investments in our aging roads and bridges, incentives to encourage families and businesses to make buildings more energy efficient,” additional tax cuts to spur hiring, and more steps to ease the flow of credit to small business, Obama said today at the White House following the Labor Department report...

...Obama said he wants to “build on” the measure he signed today “with further steps to grow our economy in the future.” While the administration didn’t release specific proposals, many of the measures Obama outlined today, spending on roads and bridges and incentives to conserve energy, were part of the February stimulus package.

It was ALREADY built into the stimulus package, but has it happened? $270 billion allocated, but only a little more than $50 billion spent. Why not spend the other $200+ billion on direct creation of jobs, as already planned. Roads. Bridges. Cities. Rebuild them all, put people to work.

If you don't like my math, instead of calling me names, come up with your own numbers - or is it just easier for you to sit back and say "No No No" ???

[emulatorloo]

9. The contracts, grants, and loans money has projects in it that will create jobs.

[demwing]

13. Yeay, we see how well that's working

It like a variation of trickle down theory.

Instead, why not spend the money directly on jobs that will put cash in people's pockets, and clean up are ravaged areas of the country as well?

Why NOT?

[emulatorloo]

17. When a hospital gets a grant, they hire people to work on the project.

When a company gets a infrastructure contract, they hire people to work on it.

These kinds of things are in the stimulus and are being rolled out as we speak.

[Dawgs]

15. It takes a lot more than $30K to give someone a $30K job.

Your scenario is the same as giving 1.5 million people a $30K check for 5 years.

[demwing]

18. So adapt. What do you think the cost would be?

and then work it in to the numbers...

[demwing]

16. Someone UNrec'd this? Why ?

I haven't seen any real arguments against the idea. Why would you unrec and run, without at least explaining yourself?

I'm talking about creating jobs in a country with double digit unemployment, and you think that's a bad idea? Great, give me one that's better.

Go ahead. Give me your idea.

[salguine]

20. Because the stimulus is for banks, not people.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

22. Yep.

[sandnsea]

23. None of the stimulus went to banks

The TARP money from last year went to the banks. The stimulus went to various public assistance, schools, energy and other public works projects; and various tax cuts including some incentives to green homes and buildings to create jobs as well as hire people directly.

If we can't get the facts straight any better than teabagger, it's no wonder we can't win a local election.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

24. The better decision is to give money to small businesses and let *them*

do the hiring...

[demwing]

28. Why?

That may, or may not, create new jobs. If you want to create projects that require X amount of rers, then let companies bid on the job, and stipulate that in the bid you have to show that you will hire X amount of unemplopyed laborers, then maybe.

But tell me what YOU were thinking.

[treestar]

25. Maybe more jobs are created by giving it to the projects they are giving it to

I would imagine some thought went into this.

[demwing]

29. Yes, I would imagine that as well

and I would imagine that some thought went into health care reform as well.

[BennyD]

26. I have a good idea too...

How about we take $80-billion of the remaining $577-billion and cover the Americans who don't have health insurance. Some have already ran the numbers on this and it and it would "only" cost 80-billion. I think that sounds better than the 1-trillion from Washington and those of us who do not have insurance could get it in a couple of weeks!

[demwing]

30. Great idea.

I stated in my OP that the new jobs created should include a Medicare E type coverage.

[anonymous171]

32. That might make people trust their government more. Which, as we all know leads to Soshalizm.

[demwing]

36. Have you seen this Ed Show VID here on DU?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x399435

It's a great mini debate on Health Care between Markos Moulitsas and Tom Tancredo, but its the last few lines from Markos that struck me:

"They (Republicans) built an entire ideology predicated on telling people that Government does not work. They are terrified of government programs that work because then people will realize that the government is not the enemy, and that they are going to work...they're going to vote Democratic because Democrats are the party that realize that people need help and government can sometimes offer solutions."

Schultz follows up "...And if these elected Republicans think government is so evil, perhaps they should consider another line of work."

A public works program is an excellent example of a government program that can work wonders. Why anyone on DU would be against it is beyond me.

[anonymous171]

50. Thanks will watch.

:hi:

[DailyGrind51]

34. Massive public works programs, like those initiated by FDR!

[demwing]

35. Exactly, and as I just posted up thread, it was already allocated in the Feb Stimulus funds

So where are those projects? Where are those jobs?

My math bad? Fuck me, I'm no economist. But I know a glaring "DUH" moment when I see it.

[boppers]

38. Those jobs are all over my state...

I go by/through at least 15 of the road projects on my weekly commute. Have you drilled down to your area on reecovery.gov? Have you seen the kinds of projects, and amount of dollars/jobs for them?

[demwing]

41. The website says the jobs are all over Florida as well

But our unemployment rate has gone up 2 points in recent months.

Roads here suck, and if there are wide scale repairs going, I haven't seen it. We do have one repair going on in Tampa, but that's it. I don't see investments in communities, I don't see money coming in in a visible way. What I do see is empty malls, closed restaurants, deteriorating highways, and a lot of people in the unemployment offices looking for work.

If you think I've got a cushy job and am blind to the progress, you're wrong. I'm one of those unemployed, again. I had a job, lasted a month. I was hired as a temp on a two year project, with no benefits. Three weeks in, I had to go to the dentist, I arranged it with my manager, but missed some time because I was in pain and could not move my jaw to speak. The business told the temp agency that I was not needed anymore, and not even allowed to come back on the site to pick up my belongings. They boxed my stuff up and mailed it to me, treated me like a damn criminal who might endanger employee safety.

So now I'm one the 11% again.

Pardon me if I don't feel all warm and fucking fuzzy about all the jobs that have supposedly been saved or created. It hasn't affected me, or anyone I know, one single bit.

[boppers]

43. Nobody's asking you to feel...

"warm and fucking fuzzy" (nice phrase, btw).

In Tampa, for example, Gulf Marine Repair got $4,159,597, which, according to them, affected zero jobs. Hillsborough community college got $650,000, which supposedly created/saved 230 jobs (at $2826 bucks per job).

The numbers are wrong, because they're self reported. They say jack shit about the actual jobs created or saved.

[demwing]

47. Yeah, I snapped on you. Sorry

I mistook your message, and thought you were saying something you were not. Too much Vicodin, too much pain from recent dental work, and too little sleep.

Peace.

[DailyGrind51]

52. Damn right, economies improve from the bottom up, not "trickle down"!

[boppers]

37. Why waste so much money on schools when they only hire a few teachers?

What's with all this spending on construction, textbooks, paper, pencils, chalkboards, busses, utilities? How is that helping construction industries, authors and publishers, printing companies, paper mills, logging, mining, power companies, water companies?

:sarcasm:

Jeebus. When an argument starts with a right wing lie ("only" 640,000 jobs, in toto, were affected), it's no wonder the math is jaw-droppingly wrong.

[demwing]

39. I am amazed at people who are happy to criticize

but don't bother offering ideas of their own. Furthermore, be specific on where the math is "jaw-droppingly" wrong, and then provide better numbers. I'm not attached to my figures.

So I'm a teabagger and a rightwing liar, eh? LOL. Some people are so opposed to ANY criticism, unless it's their own, that they resort to demonization. I was upset at first, but then thought against it, realizing that if all you've got is an insult, then you ain't got much at all.

[boppers]

40. Look at the recovery.gov map.

Drill down. Some examples I found:
A $300,000 grant that pays 16 people to work with the disabled, listed as "0" for jobs.
A $650,000 grant for a freeway interchange, listed as "1.67 jobs" (.67 jobs? Gonna take a long time to build an interchange with only two people working on it).
A $100,000 grant for the DOT... ".001" jobs.

That's 1,050,000 spent, with a supposed 1.671 jobs counted as created or saved. In the meantime, hundreds of people are working, hundreds of businesses are getting funded, both directly and indirectly.

It's not that ANY criticism is met with derision, just criticism based on bad numbers, and a lack of understanding how those numbers are generated, and what they represent.

[demwing]

42. Exceuse me if I misunderstood you, are you criticizing the Recovery.gov numbers?

Because it seemed to me you were telling me to stop complaining that I didn't fully trust the 640 thousand saved/created bit.

If we are on the same page and I missed it, I apologize.

[boppers]

44. I was making two points...

Point one: The 640K is a bad number, it's under-reported for some things, or not reported, or over-reported.

Point two: Even if that number *was* accurate, for jobs created/kept for direct grant recipients, it's inaccurate for the amount of jobs *affected* by the grant recipients. When a school system gets a $400,000 grant, and uses it to hire two teachers, it's not like they're only using the money on two teachers, and then they spend the rest on hookers and beer. Actually, even if they spent it that way, the hookers and brewmeisters (and beer distributors) have had their jobs created or kept, but those numbers would never be reported... because they weren't the direct recipients.

[demwing]

46. in that case, I am sorry I was snappy.

I need to thicken my skin a little.

[HamdenRice]

56. "they spend the rest on hookers and beer"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The OPer also seems not to realize that if the feds give a grant to a local school district to renovate a school, in addition to the salaries of newly employed workers, there are costs like, ya know, plaster, pipes, furnaces, etc.

[demwing]

59. No, the OP gets it

but believes that we should hold to the principle that investments in programs that create jobs from the bottom up - not some trickle down bullshit - is the way to make an immediate difference. I know there's a cost involved in raw materials, logistics, etc. Fine, so instead of 1.5 million jobs, or 1.3 million jobs, you create 750,000 real jobs. That's infinitely better than the bullshit 3.62 + 0.5 + 0 + 1.78 jobs saved and created and self reported on the Recovery.gov website.

And you don't have to build roads. You can hire people to clean up New Orleans, or Detroit, or any distressed area. You'll face similar issues, but some things will get done, some real jobs will get created. People will work, and we'll regain a sense of pride in self and community - and you cannot put a price tag on that.

[demwing]

45. Here's more of the same

Clearwater Christian College - $259,000, of which $179,000 went to Corrigo Health Care Solutions, LLC. their business?

"We provide extensive executive level business advisory services - most recently guiding the nation's largest health care delivery system in an extensive managed care payer Contract Agreements process with sustained revenue growth now exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars."

Jobs saved or created = 0.5

1/2 a job, to a health care management executive. Yippie.

ANOTHER:

Brinkmann Instruments INC - $112,000. Their business?

"Our instruments monitor the corrosives that can cause major downtime for power generation plants ."

Wow, that actually sounds important.

Jobs saved or created = 0. Bummer.

ANOTHER:

Chugach Management - $385,000 for "asphalt repairs"

Cool, some roadwork!

Jobs saved or created = 1.2


But who am I to be critical? I must be a Republican, tea bagging, right wing loony if I don't appreciate all the JOBS being created :)

[boppers]

48. Recovery Pork is a different issue...

...and some folks NEED to raise holy hell about it.

[Kaleva]

49. The Federal Highway Trust Fund is underfunded by about 100 billion a year.

[jeanpalmer]

51. How many jobs have been outsourced

or filled by HB1 visas during that time. Seems counterproductive to let jobs be shipped overseas, and then have to spend stimulus money to create jobs to take their place. It's like taking with the left hand while giving with the right.

[Clear Blue Sky]

53. Or create an insurance fund for the chronically uninsurable.

[greymattermom]

54. just hired someone this week

I got an ARRA grant in August. I advertised for a job opening nationwide. Two eligible people applied, but both turned down my offer. This week someone at our institution who was going to be laid off applied and I hired her. I had at least twice as many H1B applicants as green card holders or US citizens apply. Sometimes it just takes awhile.

[HamdenRice]

55. Because the federal government has almost no infrastructure to employ people

The federal government is much smaller and more limited that most people think. It has sometimes been described as little more than a giant check writing machine (with an army). That's a cliche and exaggeration, but there is truth to it.

The state and local governments actually employ people and carry out projects. If the administration wants to put people to work right away, it has to get bureaucracies that are already functioning to hire.

One of my first jobs was with the Environmental Protection Agency, in a water pollution control abatement program -- ie having to do with water treatment plants. Before I started, I thought that the the work of the program was going out and building water pollution treatment plants.

In fact, they did not build a single plant. All they did was receive grant applications from state and local governments, evaluate them, disburse funds and monitor the progress. State and local governments actually built the water pollution control plants.

The New Deal was very unusual in creating federal administrations, like Works Progress and Civilian Conservation Corps, that directly hired people. There hasn't been that kind of federal infrastructure for a long time. To create one that would directly hired people would have taken years.

Think about what "government" you interact with: The police, sanitation, fire department, schools that you interact with most are local government; the next most remote branch is the state, and most of us interact with it primarily as the department of motor vehicles and state troopers; and the federal government is the most remote and our main interaction (if we're not in the armed forces) is the IRS and social security.

Other than the armed forces and State Department, the federal government mostly monitors things, makes grants to functional, lower branches of government, brings lawsuits and collects and disburses money.

To create jobs quickly, all the federal government can do is increase funding for the branches of government that actually hire people and do stuff, and pay for projects that local and state governments want to carry out.

[HamdenRice]

57. One more thing: most of us don't live in forests and the last thing we need is roads (cars)

My father was a teen during the Great Depression and was hired by the CCC to build a lake/reservoir in rural Virginia. The CCC hired thousands of impoverished country boys like him who were unemployed and poor because crop prices had collapsed. They also did forestry projects.

But the country was still significantly rural. Most people today live in cities, and that's where the unemployment is. The typical worker who has to be put to work today isn't a country boy living near a forest, but a cubicle rat, or a teacher, fireman or police officer facing layoffs because of municipal budget cuts.

Investing more in roads when we need to move toward green energy probably isn't a good idea. Investing in mass transit is. But a federal grant for expanded mass transit isn't going to put people visibly out on the highways digging ditches. At this point, it's going to employ engineers, secretaries, xerox operators, real estate agents to buy rights of way, and word processors at some design and engineering firm. It's happening, but you won't see it on the highway or side of the road.

[Zavulon]

58. Obviously, the bulk of the money won't be spent until 2010 for election purposes.

And it really sucks that such a game is being played with so many lives.

We were told how urgent it was to have this stimulus passed IMMEDIATELY, lest the unemployment rate reach - GASP! - EIGHT PERCENT! The bill finally passes, Obama takes a three-day weekend before signing it, the money is now on a slow drip instead of being spent with any degree of urgency to improve lives of millions, and we're getting nothing but bullshit "jobs created or saved" estimates, something the government couldn't properly estimate even if it wanted to do so instead of lying.

Oh, and instead of expanding Medicare for everyone, obviously the best idea is to force people at gunpoint to buy insurance that millions won't be able to afford but will technically be at too high an income level for public assistance, and this shit is being forced down our throats just so that claims of a kept campaign promise can be made (even though it'd be a big tax increase given that the IRS will enforce it, thereby breaking another campaign promise of no tax increases for those below $250K, the one that means a hell of a lot more to me).

I can't believe the slogan "Well, he's not McCain" used to be good enough for me. Quite frankly, this sucks. When that disastrous fucking health care bill passes, I'd like some stimulus money to afford the insurance and avoid homelessness / fines / jail terms for not being able to handle the new bill.