A LIBERAL VIEW OF THINGS: The CCC means ‘yes, yes, yes’

I recently watched a documentary film about the Civilian Conservation Corps. The similarities between the terribly tough times of the 1930s and today’s sagging national infrastructure were significant enough for me to think of ways this program could benefit today’s situation.

The inception of the CCC went from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s desk to putting people on the trains to work camps in less than three months. Congress, desperate to do anything to put people to work, funded it. The CCC collected young men in their teens and early 20s who were poor, hopeless and, in some cases, illiterate and signed them up for dollar-a-day wages. Twenty-five of the $30 per month was to be sent home to their families. In 2011, dollars that would be equivalent to about $30 per day or $900 per month, $750 of which would go home. The volunteers were housed, clothed, fed and allowed into town once a week.

At its peak, the CCC employed more than 2 million young men who worked fewer than eight hours a day, but built national infrastructure that continues to last and that we who have visited national and state parks still enjoy. There were more than 80 such camps in Texas alone. The ripple effect of this program was not just limited to the young men who built all the things we enjoy, but it also employed cooks, teachers for the illiterate, engineers, surveyors, truck drivers, expert tradesmen to train in construction skills, nurses, doctors and a variety of other regular employees. The materials for building and the food for feeding the camps spurred those businesses that provided these goods by infusing much-needed cash. That cash was subsequently spent on hiring more labor at the work sites of the suppliers who, in turn, spent their pay on groceries, cars, clothes and education. When money circulates economies boom.

Today, we face an equally sluggish economy caused, coincidentally, by many of the same foibles of unregulated banking we have seen since 1980 that pushed the entire world’s economy to the brink of collapse in 2008. We have a crumbling physical infrastructure including bridges, roads, schools, government buildings and housing — the list goes on. We have an increasingly uneducated populace with 40 percent of our children dropping out and not receiving a high school diploma.  Seventy-five percent of our incarcerated people are functionally illiterate. Teachers’ jobs and libraries are being cut for short-sighted deficit reduction while we continue to spend $2.5 billion per day on defense. The time seems right for another try at something like the CCC in 2012.

If we paid our unemployed minimum wage for a standard work month of about 200 hours, we’re adding $1,500 per month to their lives, which is more than most unemployment programs. If these workers send the majority of this money home to their families or even to their own savings account, the cash will re-enter circulation instead of sitting in some computer or vault. Yes, it will cost money to feed and house the workforce, but we’ve done that before and know how to do it inexpensively. In the 1930s, the Army ran the camps. With all the food we throw away, much of it could be utilized for this project. Meanwhile, our infrastructure repair would proceed at least to a point where private specialty companies could pick up and complete them.

Unemployed teachers and craftsmen and women could be hired to teach and train a whole new generation of workers. Then, when they complete their new CCC enlistment, they could return to their hometowns and be available to apply their skills and experience in the private sector.

We might not hear any more stories about welding companies not being able to find skilled workers for their projects like we do today. Since our public schools have dropped most heavy vocational programs for austerity, the degradation of our skilled labor force has sunk to dangerous levels.

The new CCC would re-energize our workforce, build new skill bases and give our otherwise underemployed, bored and counterproductive citizens a chance to earn a living instead of expecting to be handed one.

I’d say “Yes” to this in a minute.

Turner is a retired teacher and industrial engineer who lives near Marble Falls. He is an independent columnist, not a staff member, and his views do not necessarily reflect those of The Tribune or its parent company. "The Voter’s Guide to National Salvation" is a newly published e-book from Turner. You can find it at www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks. He can be reached by email at vtgolf@zeecon.com.