Roosevelt’s New Deal employed tens of thousands of people in the construction of huge dams that generated hydroelectric power and of public buildings, among them post offices that still serve towns and cities across the country.
Roosevelt was a Democrat, but Republicans like Eisenhower also identified themselves with Roosevelt’s New Deal, and construction of the interstate highway system, initiated by Eisenhower in 1956, became an enormous source of publicly funded employment.
Mr. Trump talks of big infrastructure projects, and on Tuesday, at a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders, he agreed to spend $2 trillion to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure, leaving the details (such as how to raise the $2 trillion) to be worked out in coming weeks. Although it wasn’t one of Mr. Trump’s announced priorities, a high-speed, federally funded rail network, for example, could employ tens of thousands of people with high school educations during the yearslong building phase.
Whatever infrastructure project or projects that Mr. Trump and Congress finally agree upon, a labor force participation rate of only 63 percent suggests, rather strongly, that a lot of work force dropouts would come off the sidelines for a job that paid well enough.
Roosevelt and Eisenhower drew in such people with massive and immensely popular public works projects. And what about Mr. Trump or, perhaps, his Democratic opponents? Or the two parties together, as they vie with each other in advance of the 2020 election?
Well, let’s see.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/business/manufacturing-jobs-infrastructure.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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