Why it drives me nuts to see headlines about how great it is consumers are going into more debt....it's like the national loan shark society, when the focus should be on savings and income.

That's kind of astounding their return is so low that simple insurance premiums would make it less profitable to keep deposit accounts, talk about screwed up incentives.

Putting up some crap about certain gene pools being superior, come on James, Eugenics?

Micron did it not just for cheap labor but also tax incentives and costs of plant creation. There is a large push in Malaysia and a host of countries to capture Silicon manufacturing, has been for some time...so yet they also peddled their wares to Micron. I don't know each deal terms but some of the deal terms to China I scratch my head and wonder why any company would sign up for them. Stuff like needing to partner with a state owned company, the latest is claiming they will only honor patents "domestically sourced", i.e. do your R&D here or we'll rip off your intellectual property...

Thinking purely from a business sense, with friends like that, who needs....

Look at the Final Report of the WPA. The numbers are right there. Obviously they hired a broad variety of people, but the bulk was still unskilled manual laborers.

My point is that public services - of which social services is a large chunk - is a big part of our economy, and getting people jobs and training in that sector isn't any worse an idea than getting them jobs and training as a machinist. I'm not against training people by any means, my point was that we can do relatively inexpensive construction with unskilled labor - which is why I don't buy the $60k per job figure.

And of course SEIU and AFSCME have something to do with social services - which goes way beyond just cash assistance. Who do you think represents the case workers, the clerical staff, the aides, etc?

but since the 1970's I've been paying my own health insurance premiums and I have not come anywhere near paying out a greater portion of 60% for those premiums. (Using WiKi here) The middle income worker suffers from a nearly 60% tax wedge and effective marginal tax rates are very high. Value-added tax is 22% for most items. Capital gains tax and corporate tax are 26%, about the EU median. Property taxes are low, but there is a transfer tax (1.6% for apartments or 4% for individual houses) for home buyers. Then on top of that for what is remaining they pay a 22% VAT. I didn't mean genetics made them smarter only that it is easier to govern when people have a common thread.

Now this is something that Finland has in common with the USA.....the debt part that is. "The growth in the 1980s was based on debt, and when the defaults began rolling in, GDP declined by 13% and unemployment increased from a virtual full employment to one fifth of the workforce. The crisis was amplified by trade unions' initial opposition to any reforms. Politicians struggled to cut spending and the public debt doubled to around 60% of GDP. Much of the economic growth in the 1980s was based on debt financing, and the debt defaults led to a savings and loan crisis. Total of over 10 billion euro were used to bail out failing banks, which led to banking sector consolidation. After devaluations the depression bottomed out in 1993."

Jobs for life? "Much of the taxes are spent on public sector employees, many of which are jobs-for-life and amount to 124,000 state employees and 430,000 municipal employees. That is 113 per 1000 residents (over a quarter of workforce) compared to 74 in the US, 70 in Germany, and 42 in Japan (8% of workforce)."

If 20% earn their living associated to trees, "one in five Finns earn their livelihood from trees - directly or indirectly" I wonder if they need a PhD to do their jobs? They speak of Metso Minerals. Metso built a very big engineering office one mile form me. I forgot they were from Finland.

One more thing that the USA and Finland have in common and I'm beginning to wonder if it is a worldwide thing? "In 2008, the OECD reported that "the gap between rich and poor has widened more in Finland than in any other wealthy industrialized country over the past decade" and that "Finland is also one of the few countries where inequality of incomes has grown between the rich and the middle-class, and not only between rich and poor."

It's going to get rougher up there. There are protests almost every day. Some turn into shoving matches between police and truckers, for example. I do like the bloggers.

The global system is broken, so much so that it's difficult to see it repaired. Any ideas on a new system?

I think the entire globe is admiring Iceland at this moment...

Unlike the U.S., we were not even asked, nor did the U.S. even bother to really try...OMG S&P might DOWNGRADE, OMG!

not a social engineering site. I will call social services "crap" to amplify the point that over and over again the point is truly missing and I find offensive so many who have never been on food stamps themselves or anything close, many with millions in fact, coming up with plans on how to help "those people". "Those people" are perfectly capable, they simply need a ladder out...but instead we get these sorts of agendas, which in fact will keep them forever "down". Giving people jobs to pick up trash, instead of a way truly out is keeping them down. They will never get a good paying job by learning how to pick up litter. Why it's a community service mandated court punishment.

You're never going to get a single mother out of welfare when one demands they work at McDonalds and don't even offer child services....that person could be working at home, telecommute AND earning an online degree...

but hell no, they won't support that.....because that would mean that Single mother might just escape long term poverty. That would be too efficient, too useful.

I've seen this attitude all over, including government...

I mean "retraining" people as if they are lumps of idiocy, when those very people have Bachelors degrees, Masters Degrees, PhDs and have been working, pulling their own weight all of their lives?

That attitude I personally find very offensive.

That is the point of my comments, that the way to look at this is for $60k of one time input, one will get $90k, or $120k (or whatever the multiplier is) of output...

See the above comments for what is "unskilled"....I think U.S. policy makers believe "unskilled" is some dead body on a slab, vs. two weeks of training. Even general labor construction, they are getting on the job training. You have to learn how to push a wheelbarrow, you had to learn how to even use a hammer, put a nail in straight...never mind moving to large manufacturing equipment operation as well as large construction equipment operation...

so, all of that said, yeah, the WPA did hire the "unskilled" but their definition at the time was realistic, current definition acts like an unskilled can only ever learn "do you want fries with that". In the WPA the "unskilled" were busy flying around on ropes about 1000 feet from the ground...jack hammering dynamite into canyon walls and such, doing forest fire fighting, building roads...well, you know the list.

Same general people, very different government/policies attitudes towards people.

Also, today's workforce is skilled, they are underemployed...so all of these people need to be enabled to utilize those skills and that is also "bang for the buck" for jobs.

There is no reason to focus on the "unskilled" if one looks at the unmployment rates, they are across the board!

Also, you can't do "the taxpayer" because you'll get all sorts of claims of "we pay taxes" from various fractions, which always ignores everything from how much they get back to total net loss it is per overall costs. (yet another highly politicized rallying cry where even statistics are manipulated per political agendas). Have to be on immigration status (i.e. U.S. citizens, current green card holders)....and the reason for this is the forces grabbing U.S. contracts, jobs, industries, even remittances comes into play from various political forces...all of this ....is a truly global agenda, not at all like the conditions in 1934. Additionally there are a host of international programs to deal with payouts of SS and other taxes back to the home country, which is always ignored in these rallying cries because they have a different agenda...

so, it might be the above and not "the taxpayer", you're opening the door to political agenda=further economic disaster.

You'll also get the radical right breathing down your neck...about how all of those people never paid any taxes in their lives...therefore shouldn't quality and so on (it will be from all directions!).

Finally, structurally the economy needs to change. There is no way one will have that many construction jobs...unless one wishes to inflate another bubble..
and frankly the financial sector seriously needs to shrink, it's now 63% of GDP, which is incredible. So, there is a host of skilled workers who need to segue into other areas.

Well, firstly, I think you need to plain trash the entire talking point of a guarantee of a job. The reasons are not that the idea itself cannot be implemented efficiently and successfully, it's because of the skewing, manipulation into things that will be economic disaster by "certain political forces".

You can in essence, create such a thing that indirectly does that, with some of the points above.

I'm not into the illegal immigration thing per say, more aware of labor econ and reality on the ground. There is a massive underground economy going on, then use of contractors to subvert paying any employee taxes as it is (so of course they attack the real contractors and ignore the use of contractors to deny pay....i.e. they attack the STEM professionals and ignore the Janitors)...

That's Blender's low ball but he too is talking about real busy work, more of a social services program. I'm saying, forget that social services crap, this is the kind of thing and how liberaals get labeled as bleeding hearts, budget busters, spenders based on special interest groups, yada, yada..

I'm saying there is a better way, which is to not only provide work, but to meld it with critical national economic investments, a long term economic strategy, a manufacturing strategy, a trade strategy.....and to also tie in the U.S. workforce into the U.S. Macro economic future. i.e. instead of just throwing stones at the bird, I'm saying one can create an AK-47 with various policies to wipe out the entire flock of problems.

Also, the focus is wrong. People do not want, do not need a "hand out"....what one needs to put together is an enabling, an empowerment, an investment....for the U.S. labor force.

Instead of looking at say subsidized child services for workers who need cheap day care for example, one might look at this as the total lose of income, productivity, lifetime earnings that goes on when one cannot work because they need to take care of a child...because they have no societal supports.

The WPA used unskilled workers???? Firstly that was 1934, a lot has changed, but this isn't so, they would train them, so unskilled soon became skilled...this is true also for the war effort...a host of people had no friggin' clue on how to make a warship or airplane, so they simply trained them, on the job.

But on some projects, the Hoover Damn and the Golden Gate bridge, now those workers were high skilled quite often because of course they need them....

so, again, it was hiring criteria, at the same time no one was so crazy in 1934 to think people could not be easily trained and thank God, if they had the attitudes I see today we would have lost WWII!

Same can be done for infrastructure projects. Don't know how to operate a crane? Well, that's about a 2-4 week training program. Don't know anything about mySQL databases? Well, you can put someone through a course intensive and they will have that skill in 2-4 weeks. This is esp. true of college graduates in STEM, part of that degree was to obtain the lifetime skills to learn new technologies rapidly.

People are not born with skills and even with college degrees, most skills are learned on the job....why this has disappeared or it is acted like people cannot learn rapidly and get those skills quickly is a little beyond me.

What you are missing on government is the political end. Sure they could verify and have requirements that only U.S. citizens, LPR (existing green card holders) can get the jobs...but you would be amazed and how currently they do not verify this. Over and over again members of all sides of the political spectrum have tried to get this through and the administration and other bought and paid fors in Congress block it. It's worse with the states....

I mean pretty incredible a lot of cities literally used taxpayer dollars for day labor centers...well, that's all under the table, cash, temp and illegal labor....

so not only will they not stop it, they are busy trying to enact policies to increase it...

and ya know, look, this subverts U.S. labor law as well as the ability to make sure all labor are hires, i.e. W-2 wages, FICA, workman's comp and so on.

This goes for guest workers esp.....we have cities and states right now firing U.S. teachers and replacing them or hiring foreigners on various guest worker Visas instead.
Pretty incredible and states, cities consider paying for say a few courses to get someone certified? Of course not.

We literally have governors making deals with body shops to get even more state contracts....when these offshore outsourcing companies do not even hire local Americans! They of course provide jobs to their own citizens and bring them in on guest worker Visas! Seriously, 10k employees in the U.S. and you might find a few, often less than 100 who are U.S. citizens. I mean just incredible and I'm wondering why there is no class action against these body shops for discrimination. I mean most FCDC (Foreign Controlled Domestic Corporation) at least do domestic hires...i.e. Toyota has U.S. workers, plants here, Nokia hires Americans at it's facilities and so on...but not these cats! So, instead of pouring U.S. taxpayer dollars to create U.S. jobs, literally states are giving money to these foreign companies whose entire business model is to offshore outsource the jobs and/or import workers through the L-1 (unlimited amount) guest worker Visas.

So, bottom line, thinking our government would actually enforce or require workers to be the U.S. labor force is not at at all what is happening on the ground.

I forgot Katrina, a host of illegal labor instead of local, Halliburton and others given contracts and guess what happened beyond the use of illegals....they stiff them on top of it, seriously denied and stiff on their meager pay...meanwhile all of those local businesses in that area, wiped out...couldn't get a dime of Fed/State reconstruction money.

What is good about the AAM is to pick projects based on GDP multipliers for future economic development. Pick upgrading water processing plants. Some in the U.S. are over 50 years of age. No clean water, no water supply, no economic growth. Bridges - No bridges, no transportion, no cheap supply chain....no economic growth.

Levies - broken levies are an economic disaster, but also...no efficient water management of farmland, no increases in farming production, more people, less food, less economic growth.

No manufacturing plant for wind turbines, other nations with subsidized manufacturing get a lock on the market, learn as the produce, improve their process....zero manufacturing EVER for the U.S. in that product sector....no economic growth.

So, in other words, one needs to look at these work projects, not just as some sort of worker babysitter (Oh poor baby you're broke) deal and realize that labor is an economic powerhouse and to put money where one is going to get the best national economic growth....

and simply train people, on the job, through short courses if they do not have the skills to do that project.

So in terms of estimates, ok, let's get real and say each job costs $60k in expenditures...BUT....let's look at total GDP multipliers, long term for that investment.....so instead it becomes more like putting your money in the bank, ok, you put in $60k but you get out of it.....$70k....wala, the initial labor costs and spending costs become justified...

(just don't lie about it as if Iraq Oil would magically pay for things after you give the oil back and away via open bid auctions! ;))