Not a good day for economic news...

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by whell

This strikes me as a "living in the past" strategy. Who's going to do all of this infrastructure-building? The unemployed today are largely made up of everyone from home builders to retail middle managers to computer techies to office/clerical workers. 75 years ago when Roosevelt ordered up the likes of the WPA, there were a plethora of workers who were skilled, at least minimally and many were quite skilled, in labor, construction, carpentry, etc. Today, those skills are a bit harder to come by in today's workforce. Not to mention that many of today's workers are averse to getting their hands dirty. Also, the composition of today's workforce is majority female.

So, whose gonna do all this building? I suspect we'd have to import labor to do the type of massive labor infusion / government payroll spending to get the the WPA levels of the 1930's. It's not meant to be an antagonistic question, but rather a "real" assessment of today's labor force versus "yester-year."

Ah yes, the usual crap about the American worker who won't get his habds dirty - 99and 44/100ths pure BS.

Having a job takes money, you know gas for the car to get you back and forth. If the people are offered something below the poverty level it does not pay to accept it, you are better off with odd jobs, especially if payment is under the table. You sure can't survive on Chinese rates.

Then we have all those construction workers who were replaced with illegals, there are scores of them. Training - who here in this group has never used a hammer? I have about four, air compressor and three different nail guns. Power tools galore, drills, saws, chop saw.