De-privatization

I believe turning back the tide from contracting out government services is a way to help make things better.

This method is not specifically connected to racism, but in the process of assisting with income inequality it should help many of the people who try and work for social good have less stress and more energy.

Many people already acknowledge that more people being able to survive on the wages of a single job is a good thing, but there are various thoughts about how to get there. One is raising the minimum wage. I do support raising the minimum wage, but I believe de-privatization can be even more effective.

First of all, when minimum wage increases are rolled out, it tends to be staggered, slowing down the impact. There are often limitations on which sectors or business sizes are affected. There are the complaints about how it is sure to cause inflation. That has been demonstrated to be false, but the complaints will still happen and they will still make some people angry.

Imagine instead a new round of government hiring.

First of all, just removing the contracts from the contractors could be helpful in striking a blow at corporate influence, which has a value all its own. Besides that, the new hires will now be working at a living wage with benefits, because that is what government does, and should do.

Even with the benefits and wages, the government may still be saving some money. There is a lot of overhead with contracting. This money is now going to the workers, and probably being quickly spent. Most working class people are behind and trying to catch up now. That is going to increase cash flow in the economy right away, which is sorely needed.

Job creation was supposed to be accomplished by tax cuts to businesses and the wealthy, but oddly that did not work out. When you have people who are desperate for jobs, you can get them to work a lot without much recompense. This is not great for the workers or society.

Now that there are jobs available with better compensation, others seeking employment don't have to be quite as desperate. This is what actually drives wages up. It worked well during the Bill Clinton years. Wages and benefits were really good then, and it wasn't because of the goodness of corporate hearts, but because there was competition.

The current economic situation has stifled cash flow. You could give everyone a cash bonus, like George W Bush did with the rebates. That can have a limited impact, but with so many people in debt, most of the money would still go to banks, and not require new hiring.

Once upon a time World War II was an economic stimulus. It is not impossible that a natural disaster of some kind could jump start the economy, but hoping for disaster seems wrong. As it is, war in Iraq and Afghanistan enriched certain contractors without providing great benefit to the economy. I suspect some people have probably done well financially on various hurricanes, but it's the same people who do well with no hurricane, plus extra human suffering. That is not the answer.

So the government should just hire people. They can hire people to rebuild infrastructure. They can hire people to provide job training. They can hire people to document our times. We can take some inspiration from the Works Progress Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, but we don't have to stop there. A lot of the KBR contracts were food service; let actual federal employees do that. Maybe let federal employees feed other people living in food deserts. There are plenty of needs out there.

One excellent place for new hires would probably be the Internal Revenue Service. Yesterday I mentioned Free Lunch; Johnston has another book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else.

Now, Perfectly Legal is a dryer read than Free Lunch, as you might expect of a book that focuses so much on tax law. However, it does show that there are a lot of holes in the system, and a lot of tax cheats. People hired to deal with that would pay for themselves.