You could get a lot of rather inexpensive work done if you just put all ICE and DOGE criminals in chain gangs.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
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A big reason for the success of WPA was hordes of cheap unskilled or less skilled labor.
But now everything is automated or has higher requirements. You can no longer hire 1,000 random people to build a road, a bridge or a dam, and the results would be far below what skilled people with the right tools can do.
So what types of jobs would this organization do and how well would they be able to match skills with jobs?
We're much more in need of anti-trust enforcement. Productivity is much higher now than at any point in history, but all of the wealth it creates is stolen and hoarded by a very small number of greedy people.
Freeing that up and putting it in the hands of the people would give all of us a high standard of living. Putting a fraction of it into public funding to mitigate the effects of climate change would also support this.
This we’ve done a full 180 back to the robber baron era of the 19 hundreds but supercharged for the modern age. America is like history wtf is that because one day I will also be rich and wish to run over peaons in the street, or in the case of musk and Trump, sexually assault and starve children with no consequences.
That's basically what the 22 infrastructure bill was
No, I believe Americans are America's problem. Just look at what leadership Americans prefer.
Translation: I know nothing about Americans or the American electoral system and have decided to blame the victims.
Then look at it from outside of America of you don't understand the inner working.
If you're an ally of America or make a deal with America, every 4 years they may elect a Trump
What country are you from?
former US allied country
Why are you scared to say?
Those are the wonders of gerrymandering and people who don't vote (by choice or lack of option), by and large. Hard to say this is the preferred leadership when "did not vote" would win every election if it were a candidate.
But the first sentence you wrote is mostly still right in any case.
Americans are the victims of 250 years of manipulation, brainwashing, abuse, and violence.
I'm sure virtually anyone would be as uneducated and miserable if they were born in the US.
The problem Roosevelt was facing was unemployment. Our problem is inflation and the debt.
And functional unemployment.
what are you talking about? do you mean 'underemployment'?
Yeah…
The solution is what precisely no one in politics wants to do: increased taxes and cut spending. Widespread progressive reform, while being frugal and gutting benefits.
I’m convinced it’s literally impossible to deal with.
We have pretty strong real world evidence that austerity contracts the economy, makes things worse. Government spending brings more money into circulation, stimulates the economy.
Austerity measures may seem obvious, but we’d be far better off rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy of the last several decades, and provide better/more services to those who need it.
We have the world’s first trillionaire, yet he pays a lower tax rate than most of us.
That’s if the budget has been under control previously.
I think we have crossed the threshold where pain is unavoidable.
That’s actually the logic I use- if we hadn’t had those tax cuts we’d still have a huge debt but not “pain is unavoidable”. We could have been running a relatively flat deficit that you could argue we’d eventually grow out of. You can’t argue that anymore but perhaps restoring those taxes would bring us back to more sane territory
Or we could tax the rich and expand services to the poor and needy?
I mean, we could tax a worryingly large percentage of GDP, plus make significant cuts to the military, and existing services + the interest we pay on debt would still keep us in the red.
…Hence, that’s a nice sentiment, and social services can certainly be reworked.
But we are in a debt spiral. The way out is a way no one on the political spectrum will like.
The way out is to make corporations and the most wealthy of us pay their share of taxes and not rob the country blind.
U.S taxes are ~17% of GDP, while spending is 23%. That's already significant.
Lets increase corporate taxes manyfold so its the primary source of revenue, and gut defense spending to 1/3 its size, while cutting income tax on the poor. Lets not touch medicare or anything at all, even though its arguably insufficient. Let's pretend that's somehow politically viable and wouldn't topple the US government from its side effects:
https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/newsletter/20261016-US-Budget-Deficit-Rises-Third-Highest-History
...We would still barely break even.
And that's before the AI bubble pops, and kills tax revenue, and increases that $1 trillion in interest costs dramatically through the government's interest rates rising.
There's basically no way around this without touching something painful, like social security. "Tax the corporations" alone will not be enough; we are past that point, unfortunately.
Why gut benefits? How about finding a way to properly tax the 1%?
The military budget is what needs to be cut. Benefits and programs do not need to be cut.
Probably not - but at least it might get some useful stuff done.
Bank regulation and directed credit is what you really need.
Even if someone tried pump priming, govt doesn’t actually have control of currency anymore, so any such efforts would be "crowded out" by rampant unrestrained bank (+ interlinked FI) credit creation.
The banks deserve to be in the situation they were in in the '30s, but they aren't due to a generation or two that has let them do what they want and bailing them out after they fail us multiple times. If anything their power has increased. Moronic governments pushing pro-cyclical policies and pumping bubbles is fucking insanity. Well probably just corruption - but democracy seems very weak at controlling it these days.