How can the government solve unemployment?

public work projects wont work anymore because the government wont just hire random jobless people to build shit because these people aren't as desperate as they were during the depression, plus most people have degrees, and are just waiting for better jobs to come up. just my opinion, but hopefully your teacher will ignore the fact that this small fact might have popped into your head, so just go realll generic and say "build a bridge where there isn't already one, a building where an overcrowded city doesn't need one, or another damn where we already have one". i want to read what you come up if you can come up with something. sorry for such a negative outlook on your project, so good luck.

yeah I would tend to agree that public works aren't the best approach right now. I don't think the US can really reach full employment. I'm interested in what people have to say though.

bring back gladiatorial combat
a coliseum in every town

Public works project offer only temporary relief to the problem, as projects must be continuously created to keep people employed.

Traditional economics states that the government has a direct trade off between unemployment, and inflation.  If one is high, then the other should be low. (they call this the philips curve, However in current context, its not exactly correct)

That said, the challenge facing our fiscal and monetary authorities, is a lack of available credit to stimulate growth, and allow for the continuation of expansive business operations.
    To stifle the constant job losses, the Federal Reserve is attempting to increase available credit by growing the money supply (in order to increase liquidity), and by getting involved in the credit markets themselves.  (you cant really do more than they are already doing, and they are not having much effect)

Another issue, is the notion of "Natural Unemployment", which states that the economy will ALWAYS have some level of unemployment. ('Natural' = when production is at potential).  To eliminate unemployment would not only be impossible, it would make an efficient distribution of labor impossible, because there would never be extra workers to fill new jobs, except those who got laid off 5 minutes before.  (In order for companies to be properly staffed, there needs to be a pool of qualified workers available to fill specialized positions, this cannot happen with Zero Unemployment).


The short answer is to do what the fed is already doing to stimulate the economy, and that zero unemployment is not only impossible, but not a very good idea.

If you can, write about how the government could slow the rate of 'job loss'.  (by cutting business taxes, ensuring business have access to the lower Fed-Funds rate [right now they don't], and encouraging foreign businesses to outsource to the US by relaxing trade regulations, and allowing them to use the cheap migrant labor available in the US, in conjunction with our infrastructure, to produce goods at a lower cost than say, Mexico.

are you kidding?  the US has a failing infrastructure. 

basically build new schools, roads, or other socially beneficial projects. It will employ people while helping to improve the infrastructure of the country. Additionally it does not improve our production capacities by much so in times of high unemployment which would usually be a recession, building things that do not improve production capacity by much make it easier to get back to full production once out of a recession. Maybe some sort of community service reward program. So people who cannot find employment can volunteer to non-profits and receive maybe a tax break or compensation for that.

that we do, but PW projects don't really help us out a recession.

Japan built dozens of Bridges to Nowhere after their crash of the late 80s, and they still haven't comeback.

but we probably should build a fair amount of of new infrastructure now, while people will still loan us money.

No, I'm not kidding. The US might have a failing infrastructure but do you honestly believe that just making new things for people to do and get paid for is going to come from nothing?
The fact is that people already have a negative perception on how the economy is going to turn out. They want to save money. I really don't think that as of now public works are needed because we don't have a bad enough employment rate to go to extreme measures like that. The developments that the USA is making now are for people with an education to make, the amount of jobs that are available for people without a high school diploma or even a college degree is falling.

Now, I'm not sure what we should do about this. I can't predict the future, I don't know enough about it. If public works are a good method for everybody or for the majority of the USA then go for it. But if it's going to hurt many people economically then I'm against it. I really don't know what to think anymore because there are arguments on both sides and I have a feeling that a lot is going to change in the way that the USA works in the next 4-8 years.

if they did that i would have a reason to move to the states.


i would contribute something, but i don't really know what to say (not a big fan of solving other people's problems).

well i'l add the fact that the minimum wage causes unemployment, so maybe include that fact in some way combined with a project? but theres a fact that there will always be unemployment, it just depends how high it its.

Actually true.  In basic economic terms ANY government control is detrimental, but of course everyone needs to be even (lolz).  The best way for the government to help out right now is to stop sending money to shitty companies that need to die.  You can't make everything perfect, so I don't understand why they are trying.  Sometimes people just have to bend over and take it for a while, and that's a realistic (as opposed to idealistic) view to add some depth to your discussion.

on the one hand, i agree with you, because Im a laissez-faire capitalist.

on the other, if the big three go down, more than a million people will lose their jobs.

If AIG had gone down, the USA would be TOAST.

Wall Street is the basis of our economy, if we had let it fail we would be in a 1929 free fall, and there would be no end in sight (not that there is now).

Not economic stimulus packages

I know everybody loves a xmas present from uncle sam, but its a really short term investment. I dont know much about economics but heres how i see it

You give everybody money and they will probs go buy fancy shit. Alot of our fancy shit comes from places like china, and the moneys gone again (with a little bit going to the company that sells it). On the other hand, lets say you build schools. You pay people to build the school. They pay people for things like materials and tools, and the money gets spread. Once your done, you have a new school so kids can get mad smart. what do you think?

im not sure where most of you get your information on america's infrastructure or throw around the term "public works projects".

public entities don't sit around with a shitpile of your tax money and think "lets think of something dreamy to build with all this cash".  that's for politicians.  watermains fail, sewage lift stations fail, pumps break, roads become in dire need of overlay, rich people build bigass houses that cause additional burden on the local utilities.  the local utility bills your parents pay don't do shit.  the local utility has hundreds of projects it'd like to accomplish, but can barely fund any of them.  a few are funded thru the actual utility bills, a few are paid for from state tax money, and a few are paid for from federal fax money, and a few more are paid for from some grant/loan program.  and that's just enough to keep its head above the water.

let's take your mercer island for example.  your water comes from a 30" line from the bellevue side.  now imagine a seismic event that disrupts that line (or the east channel bridge falling on it).  wouldn't it be nice to have say an emergency 20MG reservoir with enough storage that all the islanders can continue to enjoy running water?  you could hide in under a park and no one would know it was there.  or the fact that every time someone expands their house it usually increases the amount of impervious surface on the lot and then they wonder where all this stormwater is supposed to go now that it can't infiltrate thru asphalt?  or your 50+ year old (at least on the north end of the island) gravity sewage system that sends all your shit to renton since its not sexy to have a waste water treatment plant on the island?  or some more guard rails on east mercer way so people stop driving over the edge?   or failing watermains due to old age all over the island?  or some basin stabilization projects since idiots built their homes too close to some streams, and the watercourses shifted (naturally) and now their homes are being threatened to be undercut by  public stormwater in a stream?

do you really want to cut the funding to all that? 

public utlities allow you to enjoy your quality of life.  even a moderately constrained system (well water and septic system) is too much for the average lazy american to comprehend. 

public works is not building dams or an interstate freeway system.  thats massive development that really hasn't happened on the stereotypical scale since FDR.  public works is barely keeping up with our ever-expanding population's demand for electricity, clean water, flushing toilets, storm control, and roads to drive around on.

I don't have a lot of information, I'm just taking what I know about FDR's projects. I clearly said I didn't know a lot about it that is why I wanted to learn from posts like these.

We're not cutting funding, though...or so I thought. I anticipate a large raise in funds in the next few years for many different projects the government wants to work on, including public utilities. How would we increase funding, though? Raising taxes? How would we find people to do these things? Are there enough educated people to take on the responsibility?

I'm honestly interested because if this can help bring up the employment rate I'm ALL for it.

and fuck mercer island.

in the short run: increase the money supply = increased inflation, increased demand, decreased unemployment.  however, eventually the equilibrium will return to the natural rate of unemployment.

in the long run: decrease the natural rate of unemployment = increase exports, create new jobs thus raising GDP.

make wellfare coupons for mcdonalds and then tax fat people on the extra fat they carry around.... might work... worth a try

Hire all the unemployed to tear down abandoned buildings in detroit. That should last a while.

Someone put the formula for lowering unemployment in the long run related to raising gdp.

This is EXACTLY what we need to do. You hear it every day, Americans are so wasteful with out materials. Unfortunately, corporate America mirrors that of our wasting citizens. Take a look at the Asian tigers and specifically the Japanese. There is a reason they are dominating production right now. They produce goods at a low price and make them real high quality. Nobody wants to buy a car that will fall apart, and while it took them a little while they built their reputation up and now dominate the car industry. We HAVE to improve our production as a whole. Outsourcing is drastically bringing down our GDP at the moment. The trade deficit needs to be balanced and we need to learn how to produce quality goods at lower prices. This might be by raising the money supply a bit so that we can temporarily boost our production levels since the dollar is already going to come down. It will also help give a boost for unemployment at the moment.

Building infrastructure would be a great thing to do, however we can't afford it right now. We need to concentrate on getting down the interest rates that we slave away on right now down. China really has us by the balls in terms of cheap pricing. This is causing us to spiral in debt and not be able to fully concentrate on infrastructure that is in dire need of repair. While Obama may have some good plans, cutting government jobs is going to be on the top priority on the list. My family is directly affected by that. Am I angry? No. I known cuts have to come from somewhere. I just hope we aren't dumb enough to give more companies billions of taxpayers money if they are not going to spend it properly much like our embarassment of a financial sector who have proven themselves to not learn shit from history.

In the long run, we will be okay. We are just going to have some hard times ahead.  Also, you need to understand unemployment isn't that bad...yet.