# Is 9% unemployment the new "normal"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 8, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-9-unemployment-the-new-normal/588328 "2011-07-08T16:59:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-9-unemployment-the-new-normal/588328/21 "2011-07-10T21:53:06Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > There is a lot of handwaving here. Who is going to pay for all these grand ideas? All of us would, through taxes, which IMO isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker. It seems that this sort of thing is a lot easier to engineer politically on a local, rather than a national level. Voters are more likely to approve a local tax measure whose proceeds will benefit them, or at least their community, directly. Strategies of this type may prove essential, not only because we sorely need infrastructural upgrades, but also–touching on what **Shagnasty** said–there doesn’t really seem to be any broadly acceptable means of distributing income among working-age adults other than work. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2011, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-9-unemployment-the-new-normal/588328/22 "2011-07-10T23:09:00Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Fine, I don’t see the government resurrecting the WPA and hitting the infrastructure up again. I know the CCC was still in existence in the beginning of the 80s because a friend of mine worked in a state park for the CCC repairing pathways … > > If the infrastucture needs work, why not bring back the WPA and CCC and hit the damned road and fix the roads and bridges. Replace the old utilities under the roads, reharness the US to underground fiber optics while we are at it. Kick the engineers in the ass and redesign the nuke plants, it is time for an update to the old designs and lets build 1 or 2 in each damned state and get rid of the damned coal plants. Lets find all the fallow farms in the middle of the country, plant with soybeans and corn and make biofuels. Lets call the Loremo guys and plunk them into an empty car factory in Detroit and make some cars that get 100 MPG onto the damned market. Hell, lets tear down Detroit and rebuild with Old Man River City, and drag the area kicking and screaming into the 21st century. > > How many jobs would that all create? Enough to make a sizable dent in the unemployment numbers. Unfortunately, the Dems only care about unemployment as it relates to their electability, and they bought the line of bullshit that the conservative economics types have been spewing … that the market would magically recover on its own. Magical thinking is highly prevalent in capitalist economics, look at the way “training” is used as a mantra or magical chant to describe how to get people employed, without any consideration of whether or not there are jobs for them. Magical thinking will always get you in trouble, as the Democrats have discovered. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-9-unemployment-the-new-normal/588328/23 "2011-07-10T23:10:38Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > All of us would, through taxes, which IMO isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker. It seems that this sort of thing is a lot easier to engineer politically on a local, rather than a national level. Voters are more likely to approve a local tax measure whose proceeds will benefit them, or at least their community, directly. Strategies of this type may prove essential, not only because we sorely need infrastructural upgrades, but also–touching on what **Shagnasty** said–there doesn’t really seem to be any broadly acceptable means of distributing income among working-age adults other than work. There will have to be soon, because as soon as the software and hardware that solves the eye-hand problem as well as the human body has solved it is created, 90 percent of the human race is gonna be unnecessary, from a productivity standpoint. Then what will we do? ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-9-unemployment-the-new-normal/588328/24 "2011-07-11T01:49:53Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Any opinions on what eh future holds for unemployment? The truth is, that unemployment is NOT! a problem. It is a non-issue, a red herring. Just think for a minute. If unemployment was high, then we would not need to import the additional millions of immigrant workers each and every year if there were not enough unfilled jobs out there. In the last decade, we needed to bring in ten million more additional foreign workers just to fill all the surplus job openings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-9-unemployment-the-new-normal/588328.md?page=1)