I know I’m going to be harshly criticized for this, but it’s been brewing in the back of my mind for quite some time and I’m just going to ask it. Why do we have both unemployment payment and public service employment? It seems to me that if we had any sense, public service employment would
be our unemployment program.
Here we are paying one group of people to clean our parks and haul off our garbage, and paying another group of people who have lost their private sector jobs to, um, look for work and otherwise do nothing. Why do we not put people who have lost their private sector jobs to work cleaning our parks and hauling off our garbage until such time as they regain work in the private sector and not pay anyone to sit on their asses and do nothing?
We can't replace firefighters and police, obviously, but do I need to point out how much such a program would reduce problems with unfunded public service pensions? Do I need to point out how much a program like that would reduce taxes?
Because that would piss off the unionized park cleaner-uppers and garbagemen. And you'd have to pay Workmens Comp and then get sued for real and imaginned injuried and mental suffering. Oh, and it's actual work, so ex-bankers and such wouldn't want to do that. ANd there are a number of other reasons, both real, imagined and sarcastic.
ReplyDeleteJust think of all the unemployed people rushing to take the labor jobs recently vacated by the immigrants down in Alabama.
Yeah, I thought so.