A New “Works Progress Administration” Could Save America — So Why Isn’t Anyone Asking For It?

From 1935 to 1943, the Works Progress Administration employed 8 million Americans in the areas of construction, art, and education. During the Great Depression, unemployment rates hit an estimated 24.9% —and while we’re still hovering around 10%, the prospects for long-term employment aren’t great. A new Works Progress Administration could make jobs for many of those currently unemployed while also improving our national infrastructure. This is exactly what we need now.

As the second stimulus negotiations painstakingly continue, we are being held hostage by rich politicians. Neither group knows how much a banana costs (What could it be Michael? $10?), and what seems to elude them is that no one is interested in a “hand out.” The American left (the global center right) believes that welfare needs to be doled out to keep people from working. The American right (the global radical right) believes that welfare needs to be pulled back to encourage people to work more.

In fact, what the American public wants is to be able to work for reasonable wages in a safe, controlled environment. Our economic future depends on jobs being available and also necessary.

The very foundation of America is that people want to work hard for what they deserve on things that matter. This is not a partisan issue: It is the very spirit of our country. As we continue to fail at managing our pandemic, we need to start thinking about the shape of our country moving forward. We need to think about what the future will look like.

Making Better Jobs for the Future of America

And amazingly, within less than two months, Harry Hopkins put more than 4 million Americans to work doing everything from paving roads and building parks and airports, to painting murals. The WPA in its eight-year existence employed about 8.5 million people. And since the country had about 200 million fewer people at that time, well if you employed 4 million people in less than two months, that would be the equivalent of about 10 million Americans put to work.

Once the pandemic clears, many of the jobs aren’t coming back. It’s because they weren’t useful or needed. Currently, the strategy is to pump more money into businesses so they can keep people employed. But if these businesses (and, by extension, the employees) aren’t producing value for the country, why should they be propped up?

We don’t need more meaningless jobs that produce nothing of value. We don’t need to keep trying to desperately employ people in fading industries. We don’t need to keep bailing out large corporations.

What we need to do is create work that is beneficial to our people.

We need to improve our supply lines so that everyone can get fed, and so that food waste is minimized. We need to improve our housing situation so that everyone can be housed. And we need to improve our medical system, as it is the right of everyone to have access to medical care.

These three things — food security, medical security, and housing security — can all be accomplished through a new Works Progress Administration. Not only can we put people to work so they can afford food, medicine, and housing, but we can put them to work streamlining and improving upon our food, medical, and housing systems. These are basic necessities, and they don’t supplant, replace, or interfere with luxury goods, optional services, or the basic tenets of capitalism.

We can train people to become doctors, so our medical system doesn’t encounter delays as we transition to more accessible medical care. We can train people to be construction workers and contractors, and that training will last well beyond the civil works that they work on. The people trained through the Works Progress Administration can seamlessly move into private enterprise once the public projects are done.

This has been tried before in our country and it was wildly successful. So why not now?

Well, communism.

Communism Was Always a Red Herring

Today, most moderate politicians are worried about appearing socialist or (even worse) communist. But our country has always had some socialist policies: Every country is a blend of policies, whether communist or capitalist. Our social security administration is an example of this.

The fear associated with a “Works Progress Administration” is that it comes ideologically too close to “government-assigned jobs” for comfort. But again, this is a red herring. The Works Progress Administration produces jobs that Americans can choose to apply for. This is no different than any other government branch, such as the military.

The first WPA came under fire because it put a significant amount of money into the arts and entertainment. Yet, what have most people been doing during their quarantine? Streaming video, listening to podcasts, and playing games. Over thousands of years, it’s become inarguable that arts and entertainment are essential nourishment for the human spirit — a part of what makes life worth living.

Of course, it’s also about capitalism. The Works Progress Administration put the work of developing the economy firmly in the government’s hands. Thus far, the stimulus payments have been targeted towards private enterprise — giving money to companies through PPP and EIDL loans and hoping that this money trickles down to employees. It may be years before we understand the full economic fallout of the first stimulus, but it’s unlikely that much of that money did, in fact, trickle down. Abuse of the funds has already proven to be rampant.

The ultimate truth is that improving the national infrastructure and giving people jobs should be a non-partisan issue. It fulfills the goals of both the Republican and Democratic parties. But a new Works Progress Administration also requires brave leaders who are willing to break away from the pack — and who are willing to do the hard work of rebuilding the country, rather than just vying for control.