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Do you think the Civilian Conservation Corp would be successful if it was brought *back* in 2016?
Do you believe if the civilian conservation corp was brought back today (similar to the one in FDR new deal plan), would it be good or bad for the economy? It put unemployed workers back to work through rebuilding roadways and park trails. Also, if we went back in time to 2008 when the recession hit, do you think it would be beneficial?
The unions would never let it exist in the 21st century.
It is no coincidence that FDR believed that public sector employees should not have collective bargaining rights. His view of public unions was just like the views of Scott Walker, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Rick Snyder, etc.
Unions are irrelevant. The current public sector unions are not made up of the kind of laborers that the CCC employed. They are largely made up of white collar, college educated workers. Teachers, bureaucrats, etc... They were not people who worked for the CCC when it existed and not the people a modern version would employ now.
The CCC did a lot of environmental work - reforestation, drainage improvements, tree planting, erosion control, flood control, cutting hiking trails, etc.. I would think that liberals would applaud that stuff for the most part.
Literally the CCC employed a lot of young men with shovels. They moved a lot of earth around with those shovels. It was hard work.
The bigger problem I think is that young American males today don't want to do the kind of work the CCC did for the equivalent pay. We have Gallup surveys that show only about 25% of young people want a physically demanding job. Basically less than half of young men and a small fraction of young women at best.
They might do it for high enough pay, ie: 20 an hour. Problem is that CCC jobs paid the equivalent of 7-10 an hour.
As a way of shoveling tax money to Congressional districts, sure it'd be 'successful'.
At least they built stuff that future generations continue to enjoy. I go on hiking trails the CCC cut. Better than spending money on useless quagmire wars.
However, I can see too many problems with it today. For example, it would have to be coed and this would lead to all kinds of issues. There would be sexual assaults, sexual harassment, etc. There would be issues about providing a safe working environment for the young people. Lawsuits would be brought if some were injured or killed on the job. Some of the young people would probably bring drugs with them to the barracks they slept in. Environmentalists might criticize the work that the CCC did and argue it was amateurish and actually harmful to mother nature.
Now, the reality is that many young people do need exactly what the CCC could offer. They need to be in the outdoors, away from inner cities and gangs. They need to put down electronic toys and focus on old fashioned clean living and exercise. Maybe some kind of program could be put together if the participants went through a great deal of background screening and there were strict rules which were vigorously enforced. I see it as something like soldiers without any guns.
It would take a whole lot of effort in today's world to make this sort of program work. I wish it were possible. I am skeptical you could have a successful program like this in 2016.
On a side note the Pres. Roosevelt copied Hitler's workers program word for word and applied it to America with the name Civilian Conservation Corp. Incidentally Roosevelt presented the CCC to the American people as his idea and it became his greatest domestic accomplishment even though it wasn't his idea.
However, I can see too many problems with it today. For example, it would have to be coed and this would lead to all kinds of issues. There would be sexual assaults, sexual harassment, etc. There would be issues about providing a safe working environment for the young people. Lawsuits would be brought if some were injured or killed on the job. Some of the young people would probably bring drugs with them to the barracks they slept in. Environmentalists might criticize the work that the CCC did and argue it was amateurish and actually harmful to mother nature.
Now, the reality is that many young people do need exactly what the CCC could offer. They need to be in the outdoors, away from inner cities and gangs. They need to put down electronic toys and focus on old fashioned clean living and exercise. Maybe some kind of program could be put together if the participants went through a great deal of background screening and there were strict rules which were vigorously enforced. I see it as something like soldiers without any guns.
It would take a whole lot of effort in today's world to make this sort of program work. I wish it were possible. I am skeptical you could have a successful program like this in 2016.
We have a coed military that works pretty well, despite a few issues regarding sexual assaults, etc... that they're trying to fix. The CCC was organized like the military in a lot of ways, so I don't think coed would be a prohibitive problem.
Do you think the Civilian Conservation Corp would be successful if it was brought *back* in 2016?
Do you believe if the civilian conservation corp was brought back today (similar to the one in FDR new deal plan), would it be good or bad for the economy? It put unemployed workers back to work through rebuilding roadways and park trails. Also, if we went back in time to 2008 when the recession hit, do you think it would be beneficial?
It wouldn't work today as in the original concept. Remember this was restricted to young men, unemployed, unmarried at a time when unemployment was over 20%. These men had literally nothing. Wages were crappy but it gave them food and shelter and even clothing. The work was hard - picks and shovels. Do you think today's millenials playing xbox in the mom's basement would do this?
Really, much of it was about building character in young men as much as just a jobs program. It was successful but remember it also took government funding. These are short term programs. In the long run, government cannot create jobs because the funds for the jobs are not created from wealth generation or demand from the market, but from borrowing and/or taxes.
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