COVID19 Food / Health / Job insecurity solutions

[Too Tall]

Is this too soon or too late to talk about what is falling out due to unemployment and any pre-COVID (job/health/wage) insecurity?

With so many people out of work who are food/health and wage insecure why are we not instituting a WPA style program? We (taxpayers) could hire/house/feed/cloth and tend to the medical needs of everyone willing to work and the nation benefits. Build roads, fix bridges, survey survey survey. The list is endless for the things we could employ our idle workforce to their and our collective benefit.

What am I missing?

[ldamelio]

A great idea. I think the missing element may be timeline for implementation. Painting with broad strokes, I think half or more of the lost jobs in the private sector will re-emerge over the next 3-6 months given that we've flattened the curve adequately. Many more will continue to return in a gradual, relatively linear fashion. Then we'll have a vaccine (my over and under is 15 months). At that time, we will be back to a new (and possibly more efficient) economic normal with reasonable herd immunity. It would take the feds at least that long to operationalize a new WPA. So long story short, by the time they would get their s**t together, it could be moot. As always, ATMO, YMMV, etc.

[J_B]

Is this too soon or too late to talk about what is falling out due to unemployment and any pre-COVID (job/health/wage) insecurity?

With so many people out of work who are food/health and wage insecure why are we not instituting a WPA style program? We (taxpayers) could hire/house/feed/cloth and tend to the medical needs of everyone willing to work and the nation benefits. Build roads, fix bridges, survey survey survey. The list is endless for the things we could employ our idle workforce to their and our collective benefit.

What am I missing?

Personally, I'm not going to hold my breath. The next election isn't looking too promising for getting this guy out of office. Maybe I'm just cynical, but unless every state mails its citizens absentee ballots, I have a feeling we're stuck with Trump. And at that point, WPA would mean "nanny state" to this j*ckass, and his base would, once again, take that assessment as scripture and be out of work. As has been the trend during this whole event, each state would be acting alone, and may need to have their own tax-funded work program. Me and my lunch pail will happily skip to the job site.

[caleb]

David Brooks had piece in yesterday's NYT arguing that we need a national service program, pronto: Opinion | We Need National Service. Now. - The New York Times

He identifies a problem that I never thought about, namely that while the Rs support service in principle, they don't in practice because existing programs are urban-centric:

Under AmeriCorps, the federal government provides money for the volunteers, matched by private funding. State commissions supervise most programs, and the volunteers work through nonprofits and local agencies. The downside is that the big, well-established nonprofits have a significant advantage when it comes to receiving AmeriCorps volunteers.

There are a lot of great smaller organizations that just don’t have the organizational infrastructure to take part. There are many parts of the country, especially in rural America, where volunteers are relatively thin on the ground. National service has never had confident bipartisan support because Republicans don’t have constant contact with volunteers in their own districts.

If a program were to be built on a CCC/WPA-type model with lots of work in rural areas, would that change things? I don't know. There is broad public support:

There’s no reason this shouldn’t happen. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans support voluntary national service. According to a Columbia University study, every dollar invested in national service produces about $4 in benefits. The number of young people who want to take part in national service always vastly exceeds the number of slots.

And as we all know, the benefits of the program accrue not only to those being served but also to those doing the serving. What would it mean to the future social cohesion of this country if a large part of the rising generation had a common experience of shared sacrifice? What would it mean to our future politics if young people from Berkeley spent a year working side by side with young people from Boise, Birmingham and Baton Rouge?

Part of the point of making it national, rather than state-based, is the social mixing Brooks identifies. We need something to rebuild the national solidarity that we've lost in a post-Vietnam world where the military is no longer a cross-cultural institution. Why not a year or two of national service?

[PaMtbRider]

Maybe I am missing or don't understand the post. Many are out of work right now because their job is shut down due to government mandated social distancing. Providing other meaningful employment would eliminate the social distancing, so why not just let the workers return to their current jobs? What am I missing?

[robin3mj]

If this country could get its head out of its ass on a plan for testing/tracing, we would need somewhere between 750,000 and 2mm people to start doing that work ASAP.
It's a drop in the bucket compared to 30mm, but it would help get the remainder back to work sooner.

[Too Tall]

Dan I'm all for everyone going back to work at their old jobs. Thing is alot of jobs just vaporized and will not come back ever and we have a massive infrastructure problem. It's not a "make work" solution or a give away.

I can see individual states coming up with their own versions of this.

[caleb]

If this country could get its head out of its ass on a plan for testing/tracing, we would need somewhere between 750,000 and 2mm people to start doing that work ASAP.
It's a drop in the bucket compared to 30mm, but it would help get the remainder back to work sooner.

I'm not going to hold my breath. This sort of centrally organized mass exercise in technocracy is pretty much the opposite of why this administration (broadly, as in the appointed bureaucracy) got into government. Noway, nohow are they getting anywhere near this sort of a problem. The approach appears to be to push for a quick, messy reopening that can be blamed on state and local officials, so that we're beyond it by election day.

[Drew]

A great idea. I think the missing element may be timeline for implementation. Painting with broad strokes, I think half or more of the lost jobs in the private sector will re-emerge over the next 3-6 months given that we've flattened the curve adequately. Many more will continue to return in a gradual, relatively linear fashion. Then we'll have a vaccine (my over and under is 15 months). At that time, we will be back to a new (and possibly more efficient) economic normal with reasonable herd immunity. It would take the feds at least that long to operationalize a new WPA. So long story short, by the time they would get their s**t together, it could be moot. As always, ATMO, YMMV, etc.

Until the Modelovirus comes along...

[Drew]

Dan I'm all for everyone going back to work at their old jobs. Thing is alot of jobs just vaporized and will not come back ever and we have a massive infrastructure problem. It's not a "make work" solution or a give away.

I can see individual states coming up with their own versions of this.

I look at this another way. I think a lot of our infrastructure issues can be addressed, or at least delayed, if more people embraced the tools that already exist to accomplish tasks remotely. Unfortunately, most of the current generation of management cannot grasp this, will not commit to the level of management and effort that is required to make it work, nor do they trust their staff to work remotely. I realize that I'm only speaking for the "office drone" category of worker... but there are a lot of them. Hell most of NYC could probably work remotely...

I have been pushing for remote work for a while (I am a mechanical engineer, parts designer). Management wouldn't allow it for anything... until they were forced to around March 16. Me & my staff are pushing hard to make a good impression so we can make this a regular thing.

I have no idea how to make it happen, but it seems like if more people embraced this, we could get a lot of time to help the infrastructure issues. And save a ton of fuel. And save people a ton of money. And let them have better home lives. And be more productive in their work. Gosh this makes so much sense...

[Too Tall]

Drew, actually I'm talking about roads, bridges, parks, water works....

[Matthew Strongin]

I look at this another way. I think a lot of our infrastructure issues can be addressed, or at least delayed, if more people embraced the tools that already exist to accomplish tasks remotely. Unfortunately, most of the current generation of management cannot grasp this, will not commit to the level of management and effort that is required to make it work, nor do they trust their staff to work remotely. I realize that I'm only speaking for the "office drone" category of worker... but there are a lot of them. Hell most of NYC could probably work remotely...

I have been pushing for remote work for a while (I am a mechanical engineer, parts designer). Management wouldn't allow it for anything... until they were forced to around March 16. Me & my staff are pushing hard to make a good impression so we can make this a regular thing.

I have no idea how to make it happen, but it seems like if more people embraced this, we could get a lot of time to help the infrastructure issues. And save a ton of fuel. And save people a ton of money. And let them have better home lives. And be more productive in their work. Gosh this makes so much sense...

I've mentioned this elsewhere, including at work to anyone who will listen. I work for a company that enables remote work and it's a struggle, at times, to get senior leadership to embrace that work-style more broadly. When the lockdown started we went fully remote (around 9K employees) in a couple days and other than some issues here or there due to child care or internet bandwidth, we haven't missed a beat. Hell, the last time I got this much done I was working remote full time at my last company. Go figure. There are few actual drawbacks and huge benefits across a number of areas, especially the environment. I'm with you, Drew.

[j44ke]

My wife's firm is scheduled to move into an open plan office space in July I think. Not sure where that's going to go - would you want to work in an open plan office now?

As far as infrastructure, it is a shame that money is in such short supply for infrastructure but magically appears when disaster strikes. No one ever seems to consider that if we spent on improving infrastructure in advance of a disaster, the disasters themselves would be more affordable.

[Drew]

Drew, actually I'm talking about roads, bridges, parks, water works....

Yep. I got you. Perhaps I am naive, but if there are ~40% less people on the roads commuting, seems like it would be quicker, cheaper, and easier to fix them. Less traffic to divert and deal with, and things may get done faster. I was just thinking about roads. But there are certainly utility issues as well. Plenty of work to be done. Same number of toilets being flushed every day, just in different places.

We are a two car family. We normally buy a tank a week for each vehicle. In the last seven weeks, I’ve filled up one car. Once. And will probably need to fill the other car next week, maybe. By the looks of fuel prices, I’m not alone.

[Mark Kelly]

so that we're beyond it by election day.

The way the current admin are going it is very unlikely they will be "beyond it" by election day. Much more likely to still be ordering 100k new body bags every second month.

[ides1056]

As far as infrastructure, it is a shame that money is in such short supply for infrastructure but magically appears when disaster strikes. No one ever seems to consider that if we spent on improving infrastructure in advance of a disaster, the disasters themselves would be more affordable.

It's a shame that when money was dirt cheap at the turn of the century due to Chinese investment in Treasuries the country wasn't rebuilt top to bottom.

[PaMtbRider]

I'm still not totally convinced the job market is going to be as bad as some expect. Yes some businesses are going to fold because of this crisis. Unemployment was ridiculously low before all this happened. If you didn't have a job prior to covid-19 you weren't trying very hard.

I work as a skilled trade in manufacturing and we have had real problems hiring not only skilled workers, but general assembly line workers as well. We have good benefits, competitive pay, and are resorting to work release inmates from the local prison for assembly line workers. It won't happen overnight, but by this time next year I would not be surprised to see unemployment at similar levels to pre Covid-19

[htwoopup]

Dan, it will be very bifurcated ATMO. The percentage of falloff in hospitality and leisure and airlines etc that will take a long long time to come back, if ever. There isn't enough supply chain around to feed manufacturing in the US to soak up all of those people if they were willing to move and switch careers. And retail that ain't coming back like we knew it.

Even in manufacturing, when you space out workers 6 feet that were closer it becomes easier and easier/ more cost effective to put in a machine to do the job.

I appreciate and applaud your optimism but this all seems pretty FUBAR to me.

Hence, Toots' suggestion of a WPA style operation may be the only way at it. Let us also not forget that in that era, there were many artists who were able to eat and feed their families as they were unemployed until the government (which is the whole of us) did something to value people and make sure they could eat and got something in return...beautiful buildings and so on in the tangible sense and intangible in that art and artists make the world a better place in many ways. Do we care about that now?

The key is that we as a society need to turn this problem of literally only 51% of the population (the lowest percentage since there have been measures of it) having employment into an opportunity. Not just pretend that the problem doesn't exist or will somehow magically go away.

[Tom]

Not to mention state government where they're looking at multi billion dollar budget deficits due to loss of tax revenue and pandemic expenses. Large and small, expect a good 10% of state workforces to be unrenewed temporary positions, furloughed, or laid off in the next few months.

[snotrockets]

Maybe I am missing or don't understand the post. Many are out of work right now because their job is shut down due to government mandated social distancing. Providing other meaningful employment would eliminate the social distancing, so why not just let the workers return to their current jobs? What am I missing?

Better yet: just make sure those that can't work receive enough so they could stay at home, guarding theirs and our safety.

My wife's firm is scheduled to move into an open plan office space in July I think. Not sure where that's going to go - would you want to work in an open plan office now?

I wouldn't shed a tear if this kills open space offices. Those were created for startups to impress their VC partners, by manufacturing an image of hard work, even though every time it's tested, they are verified as productivity killers. I'm not as productive right now at home (for various reasons,) but the most productive at the office I've ever been was a decade ago, when I had a real office, with walls and a door. For scale, I was also using a CRT monitor at the time :(