Now I know there’s nothing I could say that would be more likely to get anonymous bloggers foaming at the keyboard.
But I am convinced this is true. No, I am not talking about collective farms, slave labor camps, and forcing everyone to share an apartment and a single toothbrush.
What I am talking about is the fact that we learned yesterday that the real unemployment number in Detroit may be nearly half of the working age population - forty-five percent, to be precise.
There are no jobs in the private sector available for these folks today. What would be wrong with a federal program to put a large number of them to work for the public good?
What if we were to create something like an American Infrastructure Corps, to fix roads and the bridges and tear down dangerous and unsightly abandoned buildings?
What would be wrong with paying some of them to prepare tracts of abandoned land for urban agriculture?
Almost certainly, we could vastly improve our state’s physical condition and give these folks a better life with new meaning for a tiny fraction of what we spent to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq.
We’re spending hundreds of billions to prop up mismanaged corporations and to bail out Wall Street. Why not a little money for the battered and shattered Main Streets of our state and nation?
Naturally, we couldn’t call it socialism. Incidentally, we sometimes pretend we no longer have taboos in our society, mainly because we can discuss sex on television in great detail.
And it’s certainly true that you couldn’t do that fifty years ago. However, back then you could freely discuss different economic systems and ideas, including capitalism, socialism, even communism. If you took it as a given that we needed what used to be called a “mixed economy,“ you could debate the proportions.
How large and vibrant should the public sector be? Today, you’ll find it far less taboo to bring up sex in conversation than to talk about what somebody might call - gasp - socialism.
Today, thanks to thirty years of what I’d call silliness founded on the charm of Ronald Reagan, far too many of us have come to believe that all government spending is evil.
That, is, of course, with the exception of the trillions spent to maintain a vast military apparatus. Nobody wants to admit this either, but -- collectively speaking -- the United States Armed Forces are the world’s largest and most successful socialist enterprise.
During the New Deal, the Works Progress Administration built post offices and schools and created classic guides to our nation’s states and rivers, along with some fine works of art.
Nobody today thinks a completely collective economy is the answer. Yet the so-called free and unregulated market doesn’t seem to get the job done either. Michigan has a lot of problems these days.
And the bottom line is that we are all in this together. Clearly, we would all be better off if everyone was better off.
So let’s park our ideological taboos in the garage, and come up with some rational policies to make that happen.
This idea might just help re-build a sense of community as it physically helps to re-build broken cities like Detroit or Flint. Capitalism has failed these cities and left them for dead, a little touch of socialism might be the thing to bring them back to life.
Posted by: Benjamin Taber | December 17, 2009 at 02:49 PM
Dear Mr. Lessenberry,
I really enjoyed your comments today on the prospect and role of "*gasp!" socialism driven projects, and I wanted to follow up by mentioning that this is actually not a new idea in the US. As people drive around the beautiful state of Michigan, one might note the stands of Pine, all neatly lined row after row, and particularly prominent in Northern Michigan. This planted timber is a result of the Civilian Conservation Corps, created under the Roosevelt administration, to provide work for unemployed men following the Great Depression. With a focus on conservation and development of natural resources, more importantly, the CCC was also responsible for the salvation and expansion of the National Park system so many of us enjoy today as a reprieve and escape from the struggling economic times. Sadly, funding for this effective program was terminated in 1942, but its impact still lingers in Michigan, and throughout the US. Perhaps this is just what our state needs. On a side note, I found it rather amusing that for the oddest reason as you were about to mention on air "the United States Armed Forces are the world’s largest and most successful socialist enterprise," my car radio went silent for a moment. A random coincidence, but amusingly ironic to say the least...
Posted by: Jessica Pociask | December 17, 2009 at 05:40 PM
Here's what I don't understand; if there are so many Detroiters who want to work and who are willing to work as did the CCC, then why do I see so many Spanish-speaking immigrants working on suburban grounds crews and at construction sites?
I suspect that quite unlike the WPA and the CCC, many domestic workers want their government job to be one that pays $36.40 an hour, with union health, disability and SUB benefits, etc.
There is a reason, somehow, why it is that there are substantial numbers of immigrant workers who are finding a way to make a living in the Detroit area. There is apparently some work here that they have found, and they have priced their labor more competitively.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 17, 2009 at 11:42 PM
I am guessing you are not part of the bidding process. A company bids on the jobs and this company hires its workers. I am guessing there are no construction companies in inner city Detroit. These companies come form other cities, Grand Rapids and the such. They don’t just come in a hire the locals. Most of these people do not have the transportation to get to these far away companies. It sounds good to just blame it on lazy people and bash unions, nice try. and next time leave a name
Posted by: Nathan F | December 18, 2009 at 09:42 AM