massive<\/em> numbers of new jobs, fast. America right now faces a deficit\u2014conservatively estimated\u2014of at least 20 million jobs. Yet the government\u2019s main recession jobs initiative\u2014the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)\u2014is expected to create or save just 3.5 million this year.<\/p>\nBut spending on \u201csocial sector\u201d jobs is an extraordinarily efficient way of putting people to work\u2014one that generates more jobs per dollar than any other approach. Even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner\u2014no bleeding heart\u2014has acknowledged that social-sector job creation generates more bang for the buck.<\/p>\n
How much more? According to our research, twice as much as infrastructure spending, and 50 percent more than green energy. If the goal is to put people back to work, there\u2019s no better way to do it.<\/p>\n
But is social-sector investing worthwhile, or are these just make-work jobs with no lasting value? Well as a matter of fact there is data on this, and the answer is that these jobs have enormous social benefit, which is why we don\u2019t hesitate to call spending on them \u201cinvesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Home-based health care, for example, is more cost effective than putting people in a hospital or nursing home. It benefits patients. And it frees family members to earn money elsewhere. Social-sector spending also benefits children. Research shows that kids who get early childhood development care tend to pursue more education\u2014and thus become productive members of society when they grow up.<\/p>\n
On top of everything else, social-sector workers are very good at stimulating the economy, since they need to spend almost all of their relatively modest earnings on living expenses.<\/p>\n
Finally, let\u2019s talk about equity. When Wall Street was in danger of collapse, Uncle Sam rode to the rescue with hundreds of billions in aid on the premise that major financial institutions were just \u201ctoo big to fail.\u201d Some affluent bankers have lost their jobs, but overall the individuals and financial institutions that got us into this mess have done okay.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s a different story on Main Street, where the unemployed and impoverished are suffering through the Great Recession with little of the coddling enjoyed by the likes of Goldman Sachs. While President Obama\u2019s job-creation plans are laudable, investing in infrastructure and green energy will produce jobs that benefit better-educated Americans. But nobody is doing much for the traditionally disadvantaged, even though they\u2019re doing worse than anyone else. Unemployment among single moms is 13 percent; among African Americans, it\u2019s 16.5 percent; and among youth, a staggering 25.4 percent.<\/p>\n
A democratic society can\u2019t just lavish aid on the affluent while leaving everyone else behind. The original premise behind the bailouts was that certain financial institutions were too big to fail\u2014which is why we taxpayers have sunk so much money into AIG, Fannie Mae and others.<\/p>\n
But there is another huge sector\u2014American households\u2014that\u2019s also too big to fail. If helping them is a bailout, it\u2019s at least one we can feel good about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The good news on U.S. employment is that we added 290,000 nonfarm jobs in April. The bad news is that unemployment rose as well, to 9.9%, because more people entered the labor force and many more returned to seeking work. So unfortunately, the employment picture remains grim, with a level of unemployment we might have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-policy","category-employment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}