A WORKS PROGRAM TO INVEST IN AMERICA

I have been listening to the debate in Washington with an uneasy feeling. Both parties are simply arguing over how much of a deficit they favor. The Republicans favor draconian cuts in all of their favored budget targets, health care, child assistance, anything to do with the environment, in fact anything that might make life better for the vast majority of their co-countrymen and cost their clients, the super-wealthy, some small increase in taxes. While on the other hand, the Democrats parry these violent thrusts to the well being of the nation's poor and middle class with ineffective “feather-duster” parries which have as a goal not to defang and deflect the threat, but only to limit its effects or minimize the disaster which would envelop us all if these one-sided, mean-spirited, politically inspired and shortsighted proposals were ever to see the light of day.

Our Washington legislators are all too young to have experienced the effects of the Great Depression of the last century, as I am. But they should be familiar with our nation's history and the solutions that finally enabled this nation to raise itself out of economic stagnation. It was not deficit reduction that pulled the nation of my parents and grandparents out of the Great Depression, but the onset of WWII, which put the economy on a war-footing and provided full employment for nearly everyone. Money flowed into the hands of the poor and middleclass. That was the leavening which supported the economic revival. It only makes common sense. Would a farmer get a better crop if he concentrated his fertilizer on only a few plants in the center of his thirty-acre wheat field, or would he have a better crop by providing each plant with a tiny bit of that fertilizer? It seems plain that it is the multiplying effect of the money in the hands of the many, which will provide the most economic stimulus.

I'm not proposing here a new world war to boost the US economy. (Far from it, we are fighting two senseless and useless wars right now. In fact the billions spent on those wasteful enterprises could be invested here at home to do the economy some good.) But by placing the US on a war-footing, President Franklin Roosevelt, had reason to spend heavily. He did not cut expenditures. He increased the national debt, investing huge sums to start up industrial enterprises to support the war effort. Those works-projects were the direct stimulus which generated the economic rebound during and after the war.

Today, one need not look far to find things that need to be done here in the US, areas where our government could spend money to stimulate the economy now, and have a long-lasting effects on our over-all long-term competiveness and economic welfare. One need only to travel in western Europe to compare us to modern nations such as France or Germany to understand our weaknesses. Our infra-structure is outdated, decaying or inadequate for a modern nation. Our public buildings, sewer systems, water supply, roads, bridges, highways all need repair and or upgrading. Our train systems are antiquated, our wireless and broadband access is inadequate for a modern industrialized nation. There is little modern infrastructure such as smart-grid power, access to green energy sources or nation-wide universal broadband.
Today there are millions of Americans unemployed (the formal figure is 9.1% but estimates of the actual un-and under-employed or no-longer-looking put the figure at 15%. These individuals could be put to work here, were the American government to institute a massive works program. That would put money where it is needed in the hands of people.

Where can these funds come from? Let's begin by defunding the wasteful and counter-productive wars we are fighting abroad. No one in government of out has been able to explain what purposes the Afghanistan, Iraq and Libyan wars serve. They have cost us and continue to cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually in only direct costs. An additional source of funds could come from taxes on the upper echelons of the income brackets who now pay lower taxes than they ever did since the 1950s. At present the major tax burden falls onto the working middle class wage earners who pay 35% of their wages and have no loop-holes and deductions...while the oligarchs, elites, entrepreneurs all pay a small fraction of that amount --or none at all. Let us defund these worthless war expenditures increase taxes on the wealthy and use those funds to focus on rebuilding America. Improve our nation so that it will be able to compete with other modern nations in the long run and all of us can share in its affluence, not only a small minority at the top.