Job Guarantee Act of 2014 (Debating)

[Dr. Cynic]

When I was legislating in the Northeast, rather than create the programs outright, at least originally, we offered incentives for additional employment before we'd go through the regional government. Would this be a possibility to save money along the way rather than just create government agencies at the cost?

[Dr. Cynic]

Well, someone should at least attempt to assess the costs of such legislation, rather than all of you just paddling around in circles asking, "how much will it cost?".

The last unemployment report put the rate at 8.9%. The target is 3%. We'll assume that to get to a (BLS-style?) rate of unemployment, half of the measured percentage-point difference (being working-age, willing and able-bodied people) would need to be hired. If we roughly assume a country with 315,000,000 people, then such a program would need to hire approximately 9,000,000 people (5.9% / 2 = 2.95; 2.95 * 3,150,000).

So a minimum wage job at $10.50/hour - excluding any sort of benefits or additional costs - would come to around $3.9 billion per week, or $203 billion per year.

*Impressed whistle*

I do support the main thrust of the bill, that being getting unemployed people into employment. This is a hell of a huge chunk of money, though.

[Dr. Cynic]

Just asking, but what is the national policy with regards to college education? I think long term unemployed might benefit from being educated toward new jobs and I've been working on an idea to bring to the national level a bill I introduced in the Northeast that promised NE students a college education. I'm thinking long term unemployed could benefit from a free education and job training and it could potentially be cheaper.

[Dr. Cynic]

The bill I wrote that's currently in the queue was written in anticipation of this bill failing. I didn't think it was going to pass when I wrote it, but I wanted to try and get something accomplished on it because I agreed with Senator TNF's main aim of dropping unemployment to levels as low as possible. If my bill could be somehow combined with this one, I wouldn't oppose it.

[Dr. Cynic]

Aye, ftr.