How a Public Jobs Program Could Put America Back on Track

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143710/how_a_public_jobs_program_could_put_america_back_on_track/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet_workplace

By Julianne Malveaux, The Progressive. Posted November 6, 2009.

The same nation that created a Works Progress Administration in the 1930s should create another one in the 21st century.

Eighty years ago this week, the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression. We need to apply the lessons from that era to our own to relieve the needless suffering of the Great Recession.

In just two days, between Oct. 28 and 29, 1929, the stock market plummeted by 25 percent. Between September and November of that year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 40 percent of its value. By July of 1932, the Dow had lost nearly 90 percent of its value.

By then the Great Depression was raging, with unemployment rates rising to 25 percent.

To combat unemployment and alleviate poverty, the federal government engaged in a massive public works and jobs program through the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

FULL story at link.