Bigger and bolder

"I support the stimulus package," Van Jones, author of The Green Economy, told me. "But when I look at it in its entirety, I fear that we may soon look back and say that we missed a huge chance to go bigger and bolder. After all, there were three flaws with the old economy that has crashed: it favored consumption over production; debt over smart savings; and environmental damage over environmental renewal. Some parts of the stimulus package seem to be more of the same -- trying to prop up the old, failed economy. That strategy simply won't work -- but we could waste a lot of money and time trying. Instead, we need a new direction for our economy. You can't jump halfway across a chasm -- you just end up falling into the abyss."

Rick Levin, president of Yale and an economics professor, echoed Van Jones' call for "bigger and bolder": "First of all, there's a question of magnitude. The overall stimulus is about 6 percent of GDP. We did not exit the Great Depression without a stimulus that amounted to about 25 percent of GDP -- we called that World War II... The second problem is with the mix... Only $335 billion worth goes to job creation -- that's about 3.5 million jobs, about $100,000 a job. Three-and-a-half million jobs is only two percentage points on the unemployment rate. That's not enough. I would get rid of the tax cuts and use the entire package for job creation... There are lots of great public works projects that would be well worth supporting. And, in the near term, what about CCC-type activities that put people to work right away, cleaning up public parks, weather-stripping homes, offices, schools, government buildings?"

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I've been for a CCC-type work force for a long time.