You gotta love Robert Reich, former Clinton advisor. This guy is definitely his own man. His latest pitch is that the government needs to tackle the unemployment problem. No question, Robert has figured out the country's great national problem. It isn't health care, it isn't climate change, it isn't a lack of unionization, it isn't the locale of the next Olympics...nope...it's unemployment. That is the problem. Now inching toward ten percent with growing evidence that businesses just don't seem to want to hire anybody. Surprise, surprise.
Reich says that we need another WPA (Work Projects Administration) like the one we had in the 1930s to build roads, parks, bridges, and put people to work doing these things. Where were you last February, Robert? We could have used you. The so-called stimulus was supposed to be "infrastructure" projects just like you suggest. But, as Reich knows, Obama abandoned infrastructure in favor of redistribution of income. So, the vast bulk of the $ 800 billion stimulus became non-stimulus pork.
But Robert Reich is right about one thing. Our number one national problem is unemployment. The Administration has chosen to ignore the problem and focus attention everywhere else. But, this problem won't go away. The Obama economic policies imply perpetual high levels of unemployment. The Obama policy of making employees more expensive to employers is the wrong policy.
