It all starts with the TARP money. We are looking at about $700 billion when it is all returned. Take a 3rd of that about $23.1 billion and pay down the debt with it that will leave about $679.9 billion. With the $679.9 billion we could create 13.5 million jobs at $50,000 a year. Now a 3rd of that will come back to the Federal Treasury in income tax, dedicate that for the paying down of the debt.
So what are these jobs we would create? These are not make work jobs but we could put people to work all over the country on roads and bridges for example. We have a crumbling infrastructure that needs to be repaired and not enough people to do the job. If we rebuild our infrastructure then we would be on the road, no pun intended, to recovery. Again these are not make work jobs this is stuff that needs to get done! This is on the same idea of the works program and civilian conservation corps that was created after WWII.
Turning Green for a moment, these jobs could be used for energy retrofitting. Thousands of homes and buildings in the private sector not counting the ones in the public sector could be retrofit to make them more energy efficient. For example, it was announced the other day that one of the schools here needs to have all it’s 239 single pain non energy efficient windows replaced. This could be done by a workforce of these $50k jobs. This is just one example. It also reduces our energy costs, thus lowering what it costs to run the school each year.
The big plus to this is that people would be working and spending money in the local community and that would create jobs in the local community. Spend more at the grocery store, the store will have to add more people thus creating private sector jobs. Over time this could be phased out. This is putting the money to work and investing in our future.
We need to get people back to work. This plan is not perfect but maybe it could be discussed. Again not my idea just one I am thinking about.
although it is a good idea,most people are not hands on working people like my fathers generation.people now days have college educations and want to sit at computer or sell things. they do not understand hands on labor,like road building.the people who do are union workers and want union wages.life is not simple like in the 1930's,those guys were hard working farm boys,not afraid to use their hands and get dirty.linda