Another question: What happens when employees are fired from the government? Are they banned for life? Can they come back after some period of time? What period of time?
Let’s run this through a scenario and see how it plays out:
Take your typical doofus highschool student, struggling to graduate with no college or job prospects, and no discernibly useful skills or aptitude. His he guaranteed a job? What would you pay him to do? And how much would you pay him?
And let’s say he shows up drunk, then spends the day getting high with his friends (who I assume you’ve also hired), can he/they be fired?
Now, let’s say you’ve hired him, and continue to pay him from 16 through 30, then he knocks up a girl (who you’ve also hired), and proceeds to raise a child in an environment where there is no reason what so ever to go to school or learn any useful skills. Are you going to guarantee that child a nice stable job at 16 as well?
No, I have a better question. What happens if after 5 years this turns out to be a horrible disaster of Iraq War proportions, but you’ve created a class of individuals now completely and entirely dependent on their government cheque. Can you ever possibly scale it back? Wouldn’t doing so cast people out onto the streets to die???
Or an even better question, what happens if illegals figure out how to game the system, and instead of 12.5million people you end up having to employ the additional 9million illegals?
To add to the scenario, let’s say you announce such a plan. The government is going to hire a large percentage of all the people who are out of work…say, basically, everyone who wants a job and is willing to take a government job. Now, let’s say that you are currently working for Walmart making $9/hour and getting 32 hours/week without benefits. Wouldn’t you just quit right before this wonderful jobs program goes into effect? How many people are likely to quit their current jobs so that they can also get in on the gravy train? What’s that likely to cost?
(Leave aside what this will do to prices when places like Walmart are no longer able to get relatively cheap labor because the government has sucked it all up, or the other myriad effects this will have, and just stick to the basics)
-XT
Can you imagine walking into any of those offices to find 100 employees sitting around waiting for a customer? They’d have to reverse the queue system such that the employees take a number then sit in the waiting room until a customer comes in and needs something. Sadly I doubt the paper work would get processed any faster…
I just wanted to set the record straight on TARP. From wikipedia:
Originally expected to cost the U.S. taxpayers as much as $300 billion, by December 16, 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the total cost would be $25 billion, although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner argued that the final cost would be still lower.
I was very leery of TARP at the time, but it did seem to work out fairly well, without costing anywhere near as much as most people think it did. Almost all of it was paid back.
Also, note the OP’s plan effectively raises the minimum wage to $50,000/year (or whatever the average wage of these government employees is).
Nonsense. Those who are physically fit can work on infrastructure, those what are less fit like me can do clerical jobs. Think how many government jobs have had layoffs, they can rehire teh exact same people that they laid off to refil their old positions. That young healthy high school slacker can be hired to run an asphalt paver, his slacker buddies can also work on the road crew. His pregger cheerleader can either be supported by his work, or she can get a job doing data entry, or working in a store that can now hire more cashiers because people have spending money. And it doesn’t have to be 50K, it can be 30K.
The government jobs will boost the civilian job markets into hiring people again. Not everybody will be working for the government. The influx of people with spending money will get more jobs to open up in the civilian market, and people with government jobs might opt to go to a civilian job as there would be more opportunity to move around the country and pick out different jobs.
Road crew? That sounds hard, and it’s either 110F or raining. No, I think I’d rather a nice data entry job, even though I have no idea how to use a computer. I really like the thought that no matter how bad I am my job is secure.
Why would she work in a store for $8 an hour when the government will guarantee her $30k? Working in a store is hard, you have to show up on time, be nice to people, obey orders. No, she’ll take one of these government jobs too, but her morning sickness is pretty bad so don’t expect her in before noon.
Sounds good, sign me up too. I might show up some time next week, definitely not before noon.
What civilian job market? There is no one to hire. Anyone making less than $30k left for a guaranteed government job that won’t make them work and can’t fire them.
Nope, the influx of free spending money, combined with the outflow of low end labour, has either shut places down, or driven up their prices. $50k is the new poverty line. Which is why I’ve been meaning to ask for a raise.
Uh? I just assumed the government jobs would be where ever I felt like working. I plan to be in Hawaii, not sure which island yet, so please set aside a nice federal job on each of them for me. I’d also rather not work on Fridays, and I probably won’t be in until noon on Monday.
Yes, I’ve decided I’m all for this plan. How soon can we get this rolling?
More than that, but it’s complicated. I was in favor (very, very grudgingly) in favor of tarp myself. My problem was that it was hamfisted, badly implemented, and in several cases ran roughshod over the rule of law. In fact, there’s a few instances where they apparently just decided to hand out money in straight violation of the law. Bush started something he couldn’t control, and Obama, well, the less said there the better.
The thing most of us (evil, ignorant, people-hating, etc) Republicans hated was the bailout fever and the Stimulus nonsense. Chrysler should have died and GM restructured, but that would have kneecapped the autoworker’s union. Now GM is playing accounting games, but it hasn’t ultimately changed anything (and don’t get me started on the deceptive travesty of the probably-illegal out of court cramdown and the public stock issue)
Whoops, hit submit too soon. Will post soon.
I see that emacknight and xtisme stole my thunder. Since the arguments are out there already, I might as well put throw in some numbers to back it up. YogSosoth, you have seriously underestimated the cost of this program.
Before I even get into the issue of people quitting their jobs to get hired by the government (as suggested by emacknight and xtisme), let’s talk about the definition of “unemployment.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes six measures of unemployment, U1-U6. Values for all six can be found in Table A-15 on the BLS website. U3, the one currently sitting at 9.2%, is the international standard and the one reported on the news. U4 and U5 include people who have stopped looking for jobs, and add an additional 1 and 2.6 million people to your unemployment count, respectively. U6 includes the U4 and U5 people, and also counts those who have taken a part time job because they cannot find full time work. U6 unemployment adds another 12.8 million people to the U3 count. If you plan on providing jobs for all these jobless and nearly jobless people, you’ve nearly doubled the required budget for your program.
One major thing that you’re missing is that the size of the labor force can change. Those people who are U4, U5 or U6 unemployed but not U3 unemployed are not counted as part of the labor force. They’re not working, and they’re not currently looking for work. If there is a sudden increase in the number of available and obtainable jobs, people will start rejoining the labor force. Depending on the details of what happens, the (U3) unemployment rate could actually increase as more people find jobs.
The other two have talked about low income employed people quitting their jobs to work for this new program. But how many can there really be? Take a look at Table 701 in the Census data (pdf). The table describes the number of people who had given incomes in 2008 (latest data available). Suppose your program’s lowest level jobs offered a yearly salary of only $5,000. According to Table 701, as many as 20.3 million people (7.183 million men and 13.170 women) would have a financial incentive to quit their jobs to go work for the government. If you only allowed people aged 25 and over to work for this program, that number drops to 11.9 million. Granted some of these people only worked for part of the year, and will currently be unemployed, but not all of them.
But let’s be serious here. You have no intention of paying people so little. On average, you want to pay the workers $50k. So let’s take a look at how many people have financial incentive to leave their jobs as the “minimum salary” of these new government positions increases.
If you pay at least $10k, between 28.2 and 40.8 million people would make more money by quitting their jobs (again, depending on what kind of age restriction you have).
If you pay at least $15k, the numbers increase to 46.5 and 63.8 million.
At least $25k: 78.3 and 100.3 million.
At least $35k: 104.7 and 129.4 million.
Finally, if you pay everyone $50k, between 133.5 and 159.7 million people will have incentive to quit what they’re doing and join your program.
You’ll notice that the numbers that I’m quoting are quickly approaching and exceeding the size of the labor force. Why? Because the size of the labor force changes in response to the economic environment.
Suppose then that this program goes into effect. What happens if, instead of the 14.1 million U3 unemployed people you expect, the 26.9 million U6 underemployed people show up asking for jobs? What if you offer a decent salary, and 20 or 40 million additional people show up asking for work? What do you do then?
[QUOTE=Dr. Love]
Suppose then that this program goes into effect. What happens if, instead of the 14.1 million U3 unemployed people you expect, the 26.9 million U6 underemployed people show up asking for jobs? What if you offer a decent salary, and 20 or 40 million additional people show up asking for work? What do you do then?
[/QUOTE]
Well, we’ll just get the money ‘the same place we get all our money’…i.e. the magic money machine! If more folks show up for jobs, well, that’s good, right? That means and even BETTER recovery thingy! Heck, if everyone who can work works for the government and we have 100% employment, that should be as close to paradise as is humanly possible! Happy days are here again, and the skies the skies are clear again, so let’s sing a song of cheer again, happy days are here again!!
(Excellent post btw)
-XT
(Bolding mine.)
YogSoSoth, as you know, it is a violation of the rules to accuse people of lying or being liars. This includes literally saying those things as well as other phrases that imply the same thing.
Obviously we need a way to correct for luck…
Now I’m bummed, this program sounded great. I was going to be the second slowest person working at the Maui District Health Office.
YogSosoth, one of the important principles of economics is that, no, there’s no magic way to get infinite wealth except by working hard for it. You can shove the pile around in the short term, but that’s it. There’s almost nothing the government can do (aside from legal support of business and rule of law) to reliably increase wealth.
You proposed a perpetual-motion machine. The fact that it’s economic rather than physical sleight-of-hand doesn’t mean the result if any different. There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, end of story.
Edit: This is why I generally ignore so-called Keynesians. First off, they’re not Keynesians, and ignore the fact that Keynes would have nothing to do with their proposals, along with ignoring several other critical factors he notes for trying to stimulate economies. Second, most of them seem to believe deep down that the government can manage the economy technocratically (a belief not unique to them). The scary fact is that the government does not have the information necessary, nor the wisdom to use it. Look at how so many brilliant people failed to note the massive asset-price bubble, which is what sparked our current malaise. Economics is a game where the rules and the players are always changing, because each new generation of players incorporates ever-more advanced strategies they learned frmo watching the last round…
I was once at a meeting in a country wherebthe mayor of the city we were in was comitted to 100% employment. I went to a museum, and there was a yellow lie on te floor indicating the path to walk. there was a 20ish girl whose job it was to point to he line show me where to go.
10 feet further was a young man ith the same job.
10 feet further was another one.
and so on. dozens of young peope whose job it was o stand around pointing at a line on the ground.
better to just send them checks, i think.
But they learned valuable life skills and leadership qualities. Those are the things employers are looking for and will reward with huge salaries.
Apologies for the delay, its been an unpleasant week
I did, then I talked about why they may not be so bad or said I didn’t know about one of them
One year or 5, we can pay for it. We didn’t get to 14 trillion in debt on a single TARP. And let you accuse me of irresponsibility, the point isn’t that 14 trillion isn’t a lot and I’m just falling into the same pattern. The point is that crying about $625 billion a year is disingenuous given how much we’ve spent and continue to spend. Its completely arbitrary and a bad argument to say that “We spent all this money before and got ourselves into deep debt, but NOW is the line we simply cannot cross”. We can cross and and it won’t hurt us as much as you may think.
The difference is, its not just a trillion dollars flushed down the drain. It will help people, actual people, by employing them, providing them with income, stability, and jobs. TARP and the stimulus was bad but necessary, we needed funding injected into the economy to prevent a total recession. But it doesn’t create jobs better than simply giving jobs to people. Even if we’re spending hundreds of billions, or 1.2 trillion, the cost of that is mitigated by the fact that we’ll recoup some of it back in taxes, some costs will be mitigated by rising income and buying power, and pensions and retirements can be deferred years, or decades later and doesn’t hit us all at once
I think you totally misunderstood why I mentioned tax cuts. I’m against them, taxes shouldn’t be cut when we’re still in 2 wars, especially not for the rich. But I was likening the government job program I’m proposing as a tax cut to make it easier for conservatives to swallow it, because somewhere in the back of their brains I’m hoping a light will switch on and they’ll see it not as a government program, but as a tax cut. Both get money the government has into the pockets of the people
Easy. They would have money to buy things and the economy would grow. The problem is just that you think that won’t make the economy grow at a sufficient rate than if the money wasn’t provided by the government in the forms of jobs
Is that really a serious question? Because conservatives hate government and their guiding principle is smaller government. Theirs heads would explode if you told them tomorrow government will expand their roster by 400%. A lot of things in this world could be done if not for the willingness of the men in charge to do them
I won’t dismiss your numbers out of hand, as long as you don’t use WND or Fox News as a source or some BS place like that.
So to answer your questions: Everyone qualified gets a job, but like the military, we may have to lower the qualification a little bit to get enough people. Other than making it easier, it would work like a typical job search. There could also be a bit of a tweaking of existing job regulations for this special program, such as not requiring certain mandatory raises like xtisme up there is afraid of.
Pay has already been addressed. I chose to use an average of $50000 while xtisme of course used the larger number. He’s more accurate I’m sure, but mine’s close enough and its easier to use a 5 instead of a 6
All requirements such as age and education can be either waived or lowered. Trust me when I say this but not all requirements are concrete. My job required a degree but someone who’s motivated and of average intelligence can certainly excell in it as well.
As for your other questions, I think I know what you’re getting at. You want me to say that even if we have 12.5 million jobs, we won’t get people to fill them, or will get such low-grade applicants as to make the jobs pointless. That might be true, but not for 12.5 million people. Remember, just 4 years ago we had millions more people working and the economy was humming. And I don’t think we’ll have 12.5 million people decide to fuck around on their jobs just because the government is providing them with less qualifications. And as a response to others in this topic, I don’t think 12.5 million people will just decide to dick themselves out of their new job simply because the jobs are governemnt provided. They might not work as hard, and yeah, they might not be as good when employers are not really competing to get the best ones in the pool, but its still money and it’ll still get you fed.
More can always be borrowed and spent. Hell, if we increase the debt ceiling by Tuesday, we’re getting another trillion dollars almost in our borrowing capacity. Don’t tell me that we spent all that money and it was bad but now suddenly right now is the line we have to draw in the sand. We can borrow more and we can spend more.
I would say that depends on why they were fired and the area. Best case scenario is that people who leave for rather mundane reasons such as pursuing a life of rock & roll, or annoyed their supervisor, or cussed out someone on a customer service helpline won’t be untouchable as they may have been before. People will get 2nd chances, or 3rds. If they killed someone, or worked in finance and stole a lot of money, obviously that would mean they are probably assed out permanently
A lot of those doofus kids are not part of the unemployement roster. Unemployment, as you may or may not know, doesn’t mean everyone who doesn’t have a job. It counts people only if they are looking and can’t find one. Kids, elderly, and the disabled are often types of people who are not typically on unemployment
So if a really bad employee is hired and through his bad work ethic, he gets fired, of course he will remain unemployed by the government. You are afraid, like xtisme and Dr. Love up there, that we’ll create some permanent entitled sloth-like subrace of employees which don’t work and still get paid. That’s not going to happen, even with lowered qualifications. You can still get fired, you can still be disciplined. But its insane to think that suddenly 12.5 million people will start doing that. Besides, if the worst does happen, we can simply cancel the jobs program and let the economy go to shit again, not like this proposal is going to be realistically picked up. If it doesn’t work, end it, simple as that
Yes, you can scale anything back slowly. And no, we won’t cast people out in the streets. There may be more need for homeless shelters though. And last, there’s a million reasons why this could go wrong. But it could also go right for a bunch of reasons. No need to throw in illegals into the mix. If they game the system we’ll find out and change it
So what’s the problem? People quit the private section to go work for the government is bad? Remember, I’m liberal, so I don’t see an issue there. Walmart will just have to have higher wages. Sucks for them, but when wages are high enough, then you’ll have some people quitting government to work for the now suddenly high-paying Walmart jobs
No, I used it as an average because I’m not doing match for a hundred different classifications of jobs and their pay differences. I said in the first post that there will be a bell curve of salaries. You’ll still have people on the low end and still have people on the high end, with most everybody falling into the middle
Heh, yes, we realize you don’t see the issue here, and it’s probably because you’re liberal…
What do you suppose happens to the price of goods at Walmart if they have to start paying the lowest employees $50k per year?
And by Walmart I mean every single employer in the country that currently has people working for less than $50k per year.