So...we've got nearly ten percent unemployment. Worst hit is the construction industry.
We're spending billions of dollars on "shovel-ready" projects, which turn out to require lots of materials and not much in the way of labor.
Why don't we just re-institute the Civilian Conservation Corps? Remember that old program from the Great Depression, which took unemployed young men to the nation's parks and forests, and put them to work building roads and bridges and facilities, and planting trees, and landscaping. It got them out of the cities, started them on an adventurous life, gave them some skills, and kept them out of trouble. Most of them found other careers, outside the construction industry, but all of them learned something, and did something, and our country was better for it.
These days, of course, we'd have to let the girls play too, but that's OK. And there's lots of work to be done in our national parks, and forests, and monuments, much of which can be accomplished by young people just learning how such things are done. And surely it couldn't cost much more than we're already laying out for next to nothing.
