A Stimulating Idea

At the moment there is a food fight going on up on Capitol Hill, with left and right both acting, appropriately, like children. Our economy has flagged so far that I'm tempted to start calling it a pennant and the only thing that our representatives seem able to agree on is that something needs done, PDQ. Neither Democrats or Republicans are apparently interested in reaching for an acceptable compromise, since the former are feeling their stones and the later won't stop holding their breath. What do I mean? Simply that Democrats want it all their own way on spending and they want it now while Republicans refuse to even discuss the concept that spending might be more useful than yet round another of tax cuts. The irresistible farce and the immovable objection.
My own view is that this whole bill needs to be reworked from the ground up, starting by separating it into two bills; lets have one for stimulus in the short term and another for recovery in the long.
"Beginnings are important."
I will not venture to toss about numbers because I am not presently qualified to do so; I will suggest a few specific items that might be suitable foundation pieces for a national stimulus package. Since I am of the opinion that stimulus and recovery are two separate and distinct aims with separate and distinct processes for achievement I am going to skip some exceptionally good ideas that won't do anything immediately helpful. I'll come back to them later.
Let's start by getting something established at the outset: there are lots of good economically stimulative expenditures that also produce beneficial effects in the long term in other, seemingly unrelated areas. My personal torch is for a national mass transit system. In the very short term building a nation wide people moving system would employing a veritable army in a multitude of capacities. From sophisticated engineering professionals to base laborers, the direct employment would be excellent; I can't assert specific numbers but I can easily imagine tens of thousands in each of the lower 48, especially if we include non-skilled labor. A shovel and a wheel barrow might not be as fast as a back-hoe but they certainly do work, particularly in tight spaces. As for the knock-on effect from materials, equipment, maintenance, logistics, communications et al., I have to boggle at the amount of work created and the level of employment thereby necessitated.
There are a number other benefits created by such a program, so painfully obvious that I need anesthetic eye-drops to point them out. Start with the drop in automobile traffic; less congestion, less pollution, less wear on the highways, fewer accidents and less demand for fossil fuel energy. This also increases mobility; more options for living, working, shopping, health care and education. This is just a drop in the bucket. A national, high-speed mass-transit system would correct and/or improve so many problems that the only thing anyone should have difficulty grasping is why this isn't happening yet.
I'll stop and let your eyes recover.
The next item on my agenda of neat ideas for putting people back to work is, if not original, at least reached independently. Resource extraction.
I know what you're thinking; you're wrong, so shush and listen instead.
We have created, in These United States, the single most wasteful and short-sighted society in history. There are, all across this land, titanic deposits of our own refuse. Holes and hills full to bursting with wasted products that could be salvaged and reprocessed. How difficult is it to suggest that the Department of The Interior might be funded and directed to tap these reservoirs of material and render it for sale to manufacturers? Bales of cleaned wood and fiber pulp, simple ingots of copper or aluminum and containers full of plastic beads for extrusion machines?
I know the basic idea of recycling isn't original but if we re-imagine the scale, then maybe everything old can be new again.
The last thing I want to suggest here is what the current President has already pointed out. There are a number of skilled workers and facilities all over the country that can be used to produce wind turbines and solar cells. Here's an idea; what say local municipalities in the multitude of regions across the nation that aren't dense, urban centers invest some of their tax money into getting windmills set up? Any excess power generated for the grid could easily be reimbursed to the public in the form of a tax credit and thereby allow the public to profit by their investment. In addition to immediate domestic benefits, this primes the U.S. to become the primary exporter of renewable energy technology to the rest of the world. That would include interesting places like India; or China, that huge, ever-more energy hungry nation we currently have a huge, ever-more frightening trade deficit with.
These are not pipedreams people. We're already talking about spending close to 1 Trillion dollars on this effort so I think we can all agree that we recognize the need to invest in ourselves. Think about it and pass it along. If we move this enough it might just make it to the right people.