Recovering our Economy the old fashion way, by working for it.

While things seem to have become more complicated, in actuality the underpinning of an economic society are still the same as they were when man set down roots and created his first village or city. We look around and say our economy is global and the ramifications of it are so much greater than anything in history. This is pure hubris. Things are no different now than they were in ancient Babylon or more recently in the Roman Empire. Actually I will take that back, there has been one change, communications is faster, this is both a bane and a boon, but not the current subject of this post. The real meat of this one is the historically proven ways of recovery from national economic deterioration.

The first way has little to recommend it unless you are severely short of certain resources or of space. This way involves the way empires come about and that is through conquering surrounding nations and forcing your country to put itself on a war footing. This thrusts all sectors of society to in some way support the war effort. The downside to this is the recovery doesn’t come until after you have conquered and looted the country you attacked, but it does have the ability to employ all the people a country has available as either a soldier or the logistic from home to support them. The world today doesn’t support this means of economic recovery as readily as it did even 150 years ago. Just ask the American Indians. As a side note, a major factor in this form of recovery is, you also have to win to recover not only what you put in, but to gain from it.

The second way is a much more civilized and has longer term beneficial results; it is the building of public works (Infrastructure). What qualifies as a public work? In this day and age, constructions such as Power Plants(Nuclear or Fusion), high speed Maglev Monorails, Water Desalinization, Reforestation of remote areas by Helicopter and Hand and as you can see things that in some way benefit the people while providing jobs.

So how does this help the Economy recover? I will attempt to keep it simple and concise. While the building of a public work initially costs the governing body of a country, it will eventually pay off through taxation of use, so in effect the government lays out the money, but then recovers it. This has the effect though of creating jobs, paying the workers in turn allows them to purchase food, clothing, shelter, transport and entertainment (the last assuming either wages are high enough or costs of such are low enough). This purchasing in turn ripples out from each of these projects and supports the people working on the project, after all somebody has to supply for these demands. Now the people who sell to those demanding in turn have to seek a source of supply for those demands, be them Farmers, Tailors(clothing factories), Contractors(with their construction crews), Automakers and finally entertainers(be it movies or prostitution(something for another blog)).

So the question is: Why is our Government trying to revive a flagging economy by sticking their collective finger in the Dyke rather than either fixing the Dyke or building a new one? In my prior blog the government was looking at bailing out the Automakers, how does this help the consumer buy the new vehicle? It doesn’t so really what they are doing is hoping something else will revitalize the economy while keeping these companies afloat.

My first recommendation is to build either Fission or Fusion Power plants in several States around the country. That alone would generate huge numbers of Jobs in just building these plants. The tons of Steel, Aluminum, Concrete, Pavement, Plumbing, Wiring, Computers, Furniture and I am sure I could go on. Then after the plant is built you still need people to run and maintain this facility. Once this plant is built the Government either sells it to existing Power Companies, New Companies or they could even run it themselves and make the money from selling the power. So the government initially lays out the money for this project, but they shouldn't lose money from it, if anything they will gain long term revinue from taxation or useage charges.

I could do several more examples of Infrastructural public works, but I am going to try to keep this short and push a quick point that during this process of building, the consumers have been gaining confidence in the economy since they are now employed and know they have paychecks coming after all Confidence, be it as a consumer or a tightrope walker is gained over time.

Just a quick addition to the end of this for reference, look into the New Deal, Hoover Dam as well as the Grand Coulee Dam.