I’m liberal, so consider this post from that perspective.
A few notes first: I don’t care about making government smaller, I don’t assume that private enterprises are intrinsically better, nor that government is intrinsically worse. I feel that the size of government is not directly a cause of less freedom, so cries of socialism or other crap will fall on deaf ears. Like Republicans, I don’t believe the deficit is a problem. Oh I’m sorry, I was talking about Republicans under Bush and Reagan when they had control of the White House and spent to their heart’s content. Ha, ok snark aside, I don’t feel a high deficit or future debt is an immediate or large problem.
With that said, I unveil my plan to solve the nation’s economic crises: The government hires everyone who wants to be hired.
Currently, the national unemployment rate stands at 9.2%. That’s 14.1 million people if we use the labor pool (defined as people able to work and who are not children, elderly, disabled, yadda yadda yadda) of 153 million people. I’ve looked at several sources and it seems the consensus is that the amount of federal workers stands at 1.8-2 million with another approximately 600000 postal employees, so lets just say a nice round 2.5 million to make things easier
Basically, the plan will work like this: The feds will expand their roster of workers in all of their departments by 500%, bringing up the 2.5m workers to an even 15m. This will eliminate unemployment. I suppose if one wants to simply go back to a “good” economy instead of a super fun happy orgasm economy, you can increase it by only 400% and leave about 1.6 million people unemployed, resulting in a pretty damn good unemployment rate of only 1%
This wouldn’t be an issue save for objections by people who think that government is the cause of all of life’s problems. They’ll whine about how we’ll pay for all these people, and how its just wasting money. Other will abhor the fact that federal unionized employees vote Democratic, or that it will somehow kill the private sector of something or other, I don’t know, its hard for me to tell
On the issue of money, it wouldn’t be a problem if the debt ceiling isn’t a problem. Eliminate the debt ceiling and we can borrow as much as we want to pay for it.
One might then object, noting that all these people would be essentially doing nothing, as there’s not enough stuff for an extra 12.5 million people to do. But on the contrary, I’d say, there’s plenty of things for people to do. Jobs disappeared because people couldn’t afford to hire, so layoffs and firings ensued. You’re telling me that 10 years ago, with a booming economy and hundreds of millions less people on the planet, that there was more stuff to keep track of, more stuff to do, and more opportunities? Bollocks! The reason why business needs to keep growing is that there is always room for expansion. Take away the #1 cause of people not hiring (not enough money) and they will be able to hire a lot more people than are employed
Republicans, I haven’t forgotten about them, love to lower taxes. Lets do that! In fact, lets lower taxes so much that we’re basically giving people money! You know what that’s called? Its called a job, where you take in money for what you do. Financially speaking, a job that gets taxed is better than no income and no tax. Ask a starving man whether he’d be willing to do a job and get some money, even if a small amount, or have no money and no food. Giving 12.5 million people jobs would essentially be the biggest tax deduction in history, as everyone’s finances would go from a net negative, to a net positive. Plus, with more people and more disposable income, the rich that Republicans love would get plenty of new customers for whatever they’re selling
The private sector may take a temporary hit as they wouldn’t have the amount of talent in the pool to be picky about their selections. That’s ok, they’ll get them back. With more people with money, suddenly the public is not shy about spending. That in turn creates a trickle UP effect ( 
) where private enterprises would benefit from the increase in customers. Eventually, as money is made and spent, private companies will be able to grow and offer higher compensations than government work. The ones who are not averse to risk, the talented, the underpaid, the brilliant and the stupid will try their luck at more money with private companies. Not everyone’s suited to government work and its stability, bureaucracy, and unchanging tedium. I do no fear for one second my plan will destroy the private sector. Some industries may disappear or shrink, but others will take their place
Of course, since this is simply a plan to reinvigorate the economy, there should be an end date to the experiment. But why, you ask, if its working so well? Why not employ everyone? Well, its no secret that with the security of a government job comes some stifling in creativity. I’m not going to over-exaggerate it like some people is wont to do. Its not a total mind-numbing killer, it just forces you to take into consideration other people. If government took over pro-wrestling they’d probably ban punching. There’s no conflict, government doesn’t work that way, it wants things to run smoothly even if you have to follow a million regulations. Sometimes that’s stifling, but sometimes it makes sure that the sheep doesn’t get outvoted by the wolves and become lunch
I’m not going to say that the plan to end the experiment is to simply lay off everyone at a certain point. That would create the same problem we have now, only a few years down the line. People need certainty to take risks, to buy that house, to quit your job and start a door-to-door handjob service with the nest egg they’ve built from a few years of government work.
Plus, these government jobs won’t be the highest paying ones. Now I’m not saying that all 12.5 million people will be janitors. There will be a normal bell curve of skilled and unskilled jobs, as well as an even distribution of salaries. We’re not all going to be department managers, there’s going to be a lot of us just trudging along all day. Its not great money, but its good for new grads, people with little skill, and others who just need a paycheck. Eventually, as the economy grows, more and more people will leave their government job for greener pastures. We’ll probably have a lot more than the 2.5 million people working for the feds as the new standard, but I don’t anticipate every one of the 15 million people to remain government workers
Some unintended consequences, some big, some small, some unknown:
This will probably kill a lot of the leverage private companies have on their employees. If people know they can probably walk into an office and come out with a government job in the same afternoon, you probably will hear a lot more people telling their private company bosses to take this job and shove it. Would that really be so bad? To make sure private companies are as fair, equal, and paying their employees comparably to a government worker? I think that would be great
Quality will probably suffer, by how much I don’t know. When you can’t pick and choose the best and the brightest, you’ll probably get a lot of pond scum. But think about it this way: each on of those pond scum is at least contributing to the economy, buying pond scum feed, hiring pool boys to tend to their ponds, and buying pesticides to kill the bugs flying around the algae forming at the edge of the pond
And I don’t mean that nobody will get fired. Break rules, assault people, be lazy and don’t work, etc. will still be fire-able offenses. But I’ll leave it to others to make wild speculations that 12.5 million people will suddenly become sociopaths. I know government workers. Even back when the economy was good, they didn’t go around stealing lunches from refrigerators or taking 3 hour lunches just because they knew they could probably get hired somewhere else. People are not going t simply change their fundamental personalities just because they have some job security, its not going to happen. But then I was never a fan of hyperbole except when its funny
The country will be socialist? Yeah, ok, go back to your padded room now… :rolleyes:
In all honesty, this would probably be the death of the Republican party. I’ll try to fake some tears for those of you who care
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So that’s the plan. Hire everyone. Eliminate unemployment. Eliminate the debt ceiling. Borrow as much as it takes to pay these people and when the economy grows, reap the love and adulations. I know this will never pass as long as there are people naming themselves after an 18th century protest and pretending like defaulting is a good idea, but assuming the government is able to do this starting tomorrow, is there any reason why it wouldn’t fix the economy?