DRAFT
Plan to Provide Both
Jobs (Employment Opportunities) at Living Wages and
Affordable Necessities of Life for All
(Updated November 14, 2011)
The purpose and objectives of this plan are to outline what must be done as rapidly as possible to provide meaningful jobs (employment opportunities) at living wages for all in just and favorable conditions, primarily providing the necessities and needs of life and society for all humankind. Where possible, individuals should be able to choose the type work they do and its location. Also, mainly sedentary jobs should include some physical labor and mainly physical jobs should include some sedentary work such as typing, filing, educating or being educated.
This will jumpstart the economy, end the recession and avoid a massive worldwide depression.
BACKGROUND
The current “Great Recession” is still by far the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930's.
There is a tremendous amount of work that must be done and the funds are available to do this work.
The Problem of the Twentieth Century: Poverty in the Midst of Plenty explains how many "businessmen" have kept and/or keeping prices, profits and salaries up by keeping goods scarce, curtailing production, paying low wages and laying off employees. This kept many in poverty and debt and provided evermore unemployed workers willing to work for even lower wages.
We must convince these businessmen that to have customers they must pay living wages. Until they do this, the government must hire a massive number of people to do the needed work and prevent the current “Great Recession” from becoming much worse than the “Great Depression” of the 1930's.
From Create Jobs - It’s The Law:
The federal government is required by law to create jobs. The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, the Federal Reserve Act, and international law require it. A bill now in the House, H.R. 870, would fund job creation as required by Humphrey-Hawkins. If this is not passed, the President legally must instruct the Fed to fund job creation.
"When the banks had a national emergency, they bailed them out and they found $700 billion," said Cornel West, during a 9-state Poverty Tour with Tavis Smiley. “When we go to war, we find $1.3 trillion. When the poor and working classes are living in a state of emergency, it's a matter of national security, especially the children. We have 21 percent of our precious children of all colors living in poverty. That's morally obscene in the richest country in the history of the world."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
C. U.S. Efforts to Help Put the World to Work
ACTIONS
1. Refine and coordinate this plan with the overall Common Agenda for a Peaceful Prosperous World and the plans outlined on www.WeThePeopleNow.org, in particular:
a. Plan to Permanently End U.S. Wars and Occupations
2. Congress in coordination with the President and States pass legislation that:
a. Creates a new improved Work Projects Administration (WPA) and “Civilian Corps” in conservation, construction, engineering, medical, environmental protection with strong leaders and managers in particular from the military industrial complex and encourage other countries to do the same.
b. Creates at least 15 million new jobs in the U.S. and help create one billion jobs worldwide during the next 6 months and ultimately provide employment opportunities for all at living wages. In particular in the vital areas in Section A below. Jobs should be made available immediately for veterans, low-income and homeless individuals, out-of-school youth, and others who face multiple barriers to employment.
c. Supports the conversion of unemployment offices into employment and education and training offices where unemployed can have jobs as educators and trainers or be paid to be trained or educated.
d. Forces companies that have outsourced jobs overseas to return these jobs to the U.S.
3. Expand and integrate this document into state and local plans and overall plans for each discipline/area including affordable health care, education, transportation, housing, energy, clean water and nutritious food.
B. Employment Opportunities. The following is an open ended list of meaningful employment opportunities which primarily help provide affordable or publicly supported necessities and needs of life and society for all humankind. They include all professions from accountants to x-ray technicians, planners, estimators and analysts from the Military Industrial Complex.
1. Vital Public Services. Rehire firemen, teachers, aides. social workers and other personnel who have been cut and hire additional personnel needed to restore and maintain vital services including: electricity, natural gas, police, fire safety, pubic transportation, highways/roads, public health, education, etc.
2. Nationwide Medicare (Single Payer)for All.
a. Provide nationwide comprehensive, universal medicare, physical, dental, mental health care, pharmaceutical and long term care (LTC) for all to be delivered by public and private resources under a streamlined medicare/medicaid system. According to a report by California Nurses Association, single payer /medicare healthcare for all would:
i. Create 2,613,495 million new permanent, good-paying jobs
ii. Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues
iii. Add $100 billion in employee compensation
iv. Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues
b. On case by case basis, make hospitals like Walter Reed (which is scheduled to be closed) and other city, county, state and federal hospitals/clinics and community health centers into government owned, not for profit contractor operated (GOCO) Medicare/Medicaid, hospitals/clinics that educate, train and qualify doctors, nurses, dentists, nurses aids and other health care personnel.
c. Build 1000 new modern hospitals and clinics equipped with the latest technology
d. Pay family, friend and professional care-givers who are taking care of disabled, mentally retarded or elderly needing long term care.
e. Ramp up the public health system to address drug addiction as a serious national health problem rather than a moral and criminal one. Reduce both federal and state government costs by ending the drug war. Decriminalize nonviolent drug offenses and empty our prisons of nonviolent drug offenders. (Please note, this is not the same as "legalizing" illegal drugs nor should this approach fail to protect the public from aberrant behavior)
3. Affordable Housing for All. Build, rehabilitate or otherwise obtain about 2.8 million well insulated fire protected homes to provide affordable housing for low income and homeless people in particular in inner cities and in suburbs near passenger rail and metro lines. Learn more about this from the National Housing Trust Fund website.
4. Nutritious Tasty Food.
5. Clean, sustainable, alternative fuel and energy sources including: solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, ocean thermal conversion (OTC) and VIVACE (vortex induced vibration aquatic clean energy) a new technology that generates clean and renewable energy from currents in waterways and oceans.
6. Transportation/transit for all. Build a low carbon emission, integrated, comprehensive public transportation/transit systems that includes:
a. Light rail mass transit systems in all large and medium sized cities in particular along existing right of ways and beltway where possible
b. Clean, energy-efficient buses for rural areas and suburban areas.
c. Highspeed regular, intercity monorail and magnetic levitation rail
d. Bike/walking paths and overpasses.
e. Bus lanes.
Note: Light rail can be built at 1/5th the cost of deadly toll roads. A highway vehicle would need to get over 300 miles to the gallon to use energy as efficiently as a train.
7. Publicly supported, quality universal pre-kindergarten K-College education, comprehensive vocational training and lifetime learning.
8. Paid jobs for students in vocational training in high schools to maintain their schools, for coop jobs in garages, electronics shops, recycling centers, stores and on farms to avoid drop outs.
9. Clean Water, Air and Safe Environments. Enhanced, clean up and environmental protection of our water, air, wetlands, watersheds, rivers, creeks, lakes, dams, levees, aquifers, water works, wastewater and hazardous waste systems.
10. Social services. Extensive restorative justice services, counseling, mentoring, educating, training, group therapy and providing employment opportunities.
11. Retrofitted, modernized, weatherized, fire, earthquake and high wind proofed and energy efficient schools, public buildings, hospitals, businesses and homes using:
a. Energy conservation and technologies and methodologies: improve insulation, replace inefficient heating and cooling systems, water heaters and lighting, remove/contain lead paint and asbestos.
b. Improve passive and active fire protection technologies and methodologies
12. A Rebuilt New Orleans, Joplin Missouri and areas damaged by Hurricane Irene, etc.
13. Protection Against Wild Fires:
a. Convert existing surplus aircraft to firefighting aircraft and build new firefighting aircraft. This work should employ modern technologies such as stir welding of aluminum. These firefighting aircraft could be equipped with the latest technology such as night vision, GPS, all weather capability, sophisticated digital sensors and communications and the precision containerized aerial delivery (PCAD) firefighting system
14. Construct more libraries in particular in rural communities
15. Nationwide broadband access.
16. Comprehensive repairing, rebuilding, recycling and composting of everything and the elimination of garbage dumps
17. Completion of the backlogs of work projects in national, state, and local parks and U.S. Forests
18. Expanded, affordable recreational, sports, cultural, music, theater, and art programs.
19. Reduction in the degree of climate change and mitigation of its ill effects of climate change.
20. Retooling factories, in particular those in the defense industries to build rail, rail cars, electric cars and buses, renewable energy sources, health care technologies and other items needed for all the above.
21. Outsourced jobs brought back to the U.S.
22. Engineers, architects, planners, estimators, administrative personnel, project and program managers, etc., in particular those from the MIC, to plan and execute the above work.
23. Human resource in particular “placement” personnel that maintain lists and descriptions of available jobs and detailers that maintain lists and qualifications of individuals looking for jobs.
C. U.S. Efforts to Help Put the World to Work
U. S. wars and certain U.S. stockbrokers, bankers, corporation executives and government officials caused much of the worldwide economic crisis. Helping the rest of the world to recovery from the crisis is the right thing to do. Unless the rest of the world does not recover quickly, there could be massive starvation, immigration and increases in terrorist acts. The U.S. is not in competition with the other countries of the world. There should come a time when each large country/area of the globe does most of its own manufacturing and provides most of its own services to its own people.
1. Require all agencies of the government to cooperate with other countries, to help create at least one billion jobs within the next six months in meaningful work at living wages. Fund this work in about the same ways outlined above for the U. S. including in particular:
a. Nationalize central banks and Government lend money directly to states and small businesses.
b. Enact progressive income/revenues and property taxes on individuals, companies and multi-national corporations.
2. Fund diplomacy, not armaments, conflicts, war and spying.
3. Strengthen and expand the U.S. Peace Corps and U.S. Agency for International Development (AID).
4. Support and help strengthen and expand the roles and assistance provided by the United Nations, its agencies and peacekeeping teams.
5. Replace foreign military aid and CIA spying and covert operations with increased economic aid and development funding. This funding should be managed by the State Department, Peace Corps and AID and, as much as possible, benefit the people of the country not to the government.
6. On a country by country basis, turn over bases, land, facilities, buildings, equipments and even ships, vehicles and aircraft for peaceful, productive purposes as appropriate to the host country and if appropriate items and portions to UN Peacekeeping Forces and/or the State Department, Peace Corps and AID for used to distribute and help with economic aid and development
7. Develop a general approach to decrease need for massive world wide trade whereby each country generally produces goods for their own markets and nearby countries and pay their employees enough to be customers of their own goods.
8. Prevent additional Free Trade Agreements being passed and repeal free trade laws including NAFTA and CAFTA and replace them with fair trade laws on a case by case basis.
9. Reform the World Bank and IMF so that they serve the people, not just banks, the elite and rich.