[leepowers]

One possible wrinkle: my understanding is that most WPA workers eventually transitioned to blue-color manufacturing work in the post-war era. And so the WPA was able to be disbanded without any political fallout.

Given the decline of manufacturing jobs and the transition from blue-collar to service oriented work, wouldn't a modern WPA be more permanent? If a MWPA job is the equivalent of most low-wage service-sector jobs, what's the incentive to transition to the private sector? We would be creating a environment for MWPA "lifers" - a significant percentage of the electorate that depends on a MWPA for a living.

That's not necessarily bad. But a UBI (Universal Basic Income) would make more sense. It would be better to have a program (UBI) that doesn't have the additional overhead of vetting, training, and administrating a national-scale job training and employment program. A UBI provides more bang for each government buck.

[maxerickson]

You can subsidize jobs for a few billion dollars a year. If it makes sense to do it, we should do it, not hold out for a radical several trillion dollar change to the federal budget.

The first step to a UBI is universal healthcare, or at least substantially cheaper healthcare. How close are we to that politically?