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Do we really need 5 million flagmen?
President-elect Obama has proposed initiatives designed to rebuild America's highways, boost the use of alternative power generation and create a national power grid. It has been suggested that these Herculean infrastructure goals can also help put millions of unemployed people back to work.
Obviously, this has heavy overtones of FDRs New Deal and the works programs of the 1930's.
While I think these proposals have merit, I have serious doubts about using public works programs to employ currently unemployed people.
After all, do we really need 5 million flagmen?
Now, I don't want to belittle the importance of all the flagmen and women out there. I'm sure that the people who are employed in that line of work have taken hundreds of hours of mandated training on how to properly direct traffic with flags.
But creating and rebuilding infrastructure takes more than just flagmen. It takes people with considerable technical skills and enormous capital investment.
After all, this is 2008, not 1938.
The government can't just outfit these people with shovels and pickaxes and expect the roads and bridges to be rebuilt. You need heavy machinery and people who know how to use it properly.
These are skills not easily or quickly mastered.
And this type of infrastructure work requires people to be outside in all types of weather, year round. Do you think your typical Linens-N-Things clerk could put in a full week filling potholes in July in Southeast Missouri?
I don't.
That's not to say that these throngs of unemployed people couldn't and shouldn't be put to work. I just doubt that many of them have the aptitude or the stamina to help rebuild and maintain our critical infrastructure. Even attempting to have them undertake such a massive task would be a supreme waste of time and taxpayer money.
I know it is very easy to point out the negatives of any proposal. It is far more difficult to suggest workable solutions especially to a problem as complex as this one.
But I'll do my best at being an armchair President, and give it a whirl.
If the new administration wants to create public works programs that use a significant amount of currently unemployed people, then they first need to have organized training similar to a military boot camp.
Condition these people. Get them fit for working in all kinds of weather. Weed out the weak. They can be assigned to the Highway Trash Picker-Upper Corp.
Train these people. Teach them how to use bulldozers and weld and pour concrete and run cabling and the myriad of other specialties that will be required. Anyone who shows above-average ability should be promoted to manager training school.
Create a civic draft. While volunteers could join at anytime, anyone who is collecting unemployment for longer than 6 months would be automatically drafted into the program unless they could document that they were working on improving their situation.
Unemployment benefits should not be considered an entitlement. They should not be thought of as a taxpayer subsidized vacation. If you are unemployed, you shouldn't be allowed to sit on your butt collecting a check from the government and watching the Cartoon Network 10 hours a day.
If you're getting unemployment support from the government then you should be doing something in return. Actually trying to find a job. Doing community service. Working on job skills. Even taking a class.
Just not Flag Directing 101.
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