Government Job Creation

1.   To resolve the national (worldwide) economic crisis, government needs to provide jobs. This means a full employment, service, and training program. This New Employment Program should be patterned after the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Program started by FDR as part of the New Deal; offered as a partial solution to attempt to the Great Depression. The New Employment Program’s objectives are: infrastructure maintenance, new construction and preservation work; also training for higher-level and hands-on jobs. This should include ‘learn-by-doing’ and guild type apprenticeships. This new WPA program should concentrate an wealth-creating jobs with predetermined ROIs (returns-on-investment).

2.   In general, the free market must be the one creating jobs for them to be viable and not represent a burden on taxpayers; but, we must recognize we are in an economic crisis, the government can and should stimulate the economy in this circumstance, but only in the correct way. Concentration on jobs creating ‘wealth’ must be a core requirement of the stimulus.

3.   America needs to adapt its general workforce to the jobs available in the 21st Century. Jobs and workforces are changing; America must update its workforce to accommodate the jobs of the future.

4.   Three major econometric changes are occurring in America: we are engaged in the beginning of the Data-Era, we need a workforce trained to deal with Smart Manufacturing, and we all need to learn to use the Wireless Link

a. Information technology has entered the high Data-Era. Processing power and data storage are becoming almost free. People need to know how to deal, manipulate and learn with high volumes of and instant access to data.

i. Smartphones have a larger computing power than was once held by 1970s-era mainframe computers.

ii. The Internet is evolving into the “cloud”—a collection of networks with thousands of servers. Social media, medical information, databases, etc., foster multitudes of discoveries based on meta-analyses

ii. We are on the threshold of a new economic boom – opening up a vast numbers of new services, businesses, and markets, through access to higher volumes of people (consumers) and their ability to use the data on the vast Internet.

b.   Smart Manufacturing. Robots are the menial workers of the future. Low skilled manual jobs will continue to disappear as we move into the future. Even China is replacing their lowest level of wageworkers with robots. This is the first major structural industrial shift since the advent of mass production. In addition to that: automation and information systems are being applied to supply chain management right now

i. The very composition of physical things is being altered by new materials science. Molecular level engineering and design are creating new materials, which introduce new methods and handling. They also improve quality and reduce waste. Engineered materials are already creating devices and products that did not exist a few years ago:  novel metal alloys, graphene, and meta-materials that possess properties not usually found in nature

ii. This era of new materials will be economically explosive when combined with 3-D printing, also known as direct-digital manufacturing—literally “printing” parts and devices using computational power, lasers and basic powdered metals and plastics. Already available are printed parts for high-value applications like patient-specific implants for hip joints or teeth, or lighter and stronger aircraft parts

c. Finally, the Wireless Link: where most humans will connect without wires. Never before have a billion people – (soon growing to 5 billion or more) – been able to be linked, communicate, socialize, and trade in real time.

5.   Many jobs are going unfilled in America due to a lack of experience, training or skills.

6.   The New Employment Program (above) must replace the present unemployment insurance system.

7.   Private management for the New Employment Program must be competitively based, bid out in multi-year contracts.^1.2.

8.   The housing crisis in America will solve itself if full employment is attained and viable jobs are created.

Notes:

1. Bureaucratic management for this system should not be allowed: it would become very costly and burdensome in the long term.
2. Firms such as: IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Boeing, Alliant Techsystems, Lockheed, Google, and many more, should be invited to offer a systems-architect plan for the New Employment Program. Congress should be encouraged to create a ‘GI Bill’ as an employment contract with the New Employment Program for a term of service. Small businesses must be encouraged to develop in a new and creative manner – they create and maintain a very high percentage of American jobs and are a major source of innovation in America; ‘barriers to entry’ must be reduced or eliminated for small businesses. SBA loans and grants must be increased to stimulate small business and job creation.