Commentaries

Jobs here must trump war there

More than 20 million Americans are unemployed. Nearly half of them have been unemployed for more than six months. Families are losing their homes. And the Senate of the United States -- faced with a Republican filibuster -- has refused to pass an extension of unemployment insurance for those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

The wealthy are guarded by private police in gated communities, send their children to private schools, exercise at private country clubs and are shielded from the devastation.

But for most Americans, the social contract -- the basic set of assumed agreements that we build our lives around -- is getting shredded. Hawaii has gone to a four-day school week. Several states are eliminating all-day kindergarten and shutting down summer and after-school programs. Parks go unrepaired; public pools are closed. Summer jobs for teens disappear. Abandoned homes and apartments blight neighborhoods and become centers of drugs and crime. Fewer police guard the streets.

Our values are upside down. Congress will approve $32 billion as emergency funding to pay for the escalation in Afghanistan, but it has blocked $23 billion needed to forestall the layoff of 300,000 teachers and educational workers. The military sees its job as building a nation in Afghanistan by creating security and then building homes and schools, generating jobs. But at home, we are growing less secure, abandoning homes and shutting down schools, and abandoning the unemployed.

We need to change course. In his powerful book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about the agony of a society with 40 million poor people and called for creating a program for full employment with a guaranteed annual income.

"We must create full employment or we must create incomes," he wrote. "New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available."

Work, he argued, increases dignity and self-worth.

At the time, an economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, estimated that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about $20 billion a year. And King argued, "If our nation can spend $35 billion a year to fight an unjust war in Vietnam, and $20 billion to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth."

Today, our country has spent more than $1 trillion on the misbegotten war in Iraq. And we are told we can't afford to extend aid to the unemployed? The bankruptcy here is moral, not fiscal.

We need to get this right. Start by committing to full employment, with the government acting as an employer of last resort. The Federal Reserve can purchase bonds that finance rebuilding America. Investments now -- when interest rates are near zero -- in fast trains and mass transit, in a smart electric grid, in renewable energy, will make our economy more competitive and our communities more livable -- and reduce our reliance on foreign oil.

Put people to work and housing prices will stabilize, divorce and child abuse will decline.

Put people to work and secure children will learn more and drop out less.

This will cause inflation, some might warn. Perhaps, although falling prices and economic stagnation are the problems we face now. If it causes inflation, then the Federal Reserve and the federal government will act to keep it from spiraling out of control. Put people to work first, make full employment the first goal and manage the economy to achieve that.

Dr. King knew this wasn't a small change. He invoked a lesson from the Bible. When Jesus was asked by Nicodemus what he could do to be saved, Jesus didn't say, "You must stop lying," or "You must stop drinking liquor" or "You must stop cheating." He said something altogether different. He said, "Nicodemus, you must be born again."

In other words, Dr. King taught, "Your whole structure must be changed." And so Dr. King argued, "America, you must be born again."

And now in the ruins of the old economy, it is time to begin.

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