Job Creators Quotes
At the time, the economy was virtually controlled by the banks and others in the finance, as opposed to businesses that produced things or provided non-financial services to consumers and business which was that had prevailed ever since the Great Depression, when New Deal legislation controlled the banks, stock markets, and other facets of the financial industry.
The existence of a groups of de facto “unemployable” people has been with our country since its inception. However over time, the cadre of unemployable people has changed as the simple jobs are lost to automation and computerized solutions and the jobs that are left require an extensive education and skills set. While the New Deal programs helped reduce the numbers of unemployable people, and WWII required such great production, by the 21st century, the “unemployable” population had grown substantially and proportionately from 1936.
The United States had been running a large trade deficit with China.
This was one of the early suggestions for providing jobs for the unemployed to work at developing the national infrastructure. In this case if highways and the river could be improved, transportation would allow goods to be reach more of the country cheaper. The CCC and the Job Corps of America would use a similar reasoning for public employment.
Devolution is the decentralization of government. Wales and Scotland were originally countries different from England. They came under the control of a single king but recently have obtained more autonomy—not unlike states in the United States. This reform was opposed by some politicians.
It is actually true that public works do create indirect jobs, however the efficiency of indirect job creation is not very good. If the government spends $100 on a public works project half might go to construction materials and the rest pays the salary of construction workers. Part of the materials purchase pay the salaries of workers in the supply chain. And most of the salary gets spent on goods and services which helps to pay other workers and thus jobs are created when there is a public works construction project. However the reason FDR did not want this fact to be publicized is because the economic relationships to indirect jobs is counterintuitive. Many people hearing that public works construction also produces jobs say “Well then let us fund many more government public works programs and create even more jobs—keep spending on projects until there is no more unemployment.” However that is not a sustainable strategy. There is enough benefit in the direct jobs and the use of the public improvement, that it was, in FDR’s view, sufficient without “selling” the indirect job creation picture.
At the time there was great demand for skilled computer programmers and other technical skills. But there was insufficient demand for many of the skills that the American Workforce such as airplane mechanics, or TV Camera people for example.
This is a statement that in the early 21st century would be made only by ultra liberals. But in the in the late 1940’s this was not only standard democratic party thinking, but a large number of Republicans thought of the Government as the employer of last resort including their Presidential standard bearer.
