Maybe this is what the stimulus should have been:
Call me a crazy liberal, but I find it difficult to argue with the success and the good things that came out of the WPA. This article on Brainpicker got me thinking–while I agree with the idea of the stimulus, maybe we should’ve structured it a little more like we did way back when. Problem is, something like that would never happen today. It’s too much government power, it’s taking power away from the private sector. I can see conservatives now–they call Obama socialist already! What if he passed a package like this?
And of course that’s regardless of the results. There’s no doubt in my mind that a renaissance of the WPA to help us tackle the current crisis would’ve helped us recover more quickly than almost any other solution. But conservatives will be conservatives, and they would never in a million years even dream of support such a “radical” solution.
That’s not even to mention the cultural and artistic brilliance that came out of the era. Brainpicker said it best:
We just wish the political powers of the day would consider investing in such art-driven efforts the way the WPA did. What would $7 billion be, adjusted for inflation? Roughly $160 billion. And how does that compare to what today’s government is investing in war? As the kids say, just sayin’.
I couldn’t agree more. Check out some of the amazing posters on this Flickr set.
What do you think? Would you like to see this? Is it too “socialist” for you? I’m curious.
July 13, 2010 at 11:06 am
I really hate it when either side makes charges of socialism, because the federal government is huge and neither the right or left wants to give up any of their power, but it's not socialism.
As a somewhat crazy libertarian, I would love to curb the expansion of government power, but a WPA revival is one thing that the government could do that might actually be useful. Although I wonder how it would play out with all the white collar unemployment.