30 MILLION PRODUCTIVE JOBS TO REBUILD US INFRASTRUCTURE, INDUSTRY AND 

AGRICULTURE: THE PROGRAM TO END THE ECONOMIC DEPRESSION 

by Webster G. Tarpley, www.tarpley.net 

November 14, 2009 

The US and the world are gripped by a deepening economic depression. There is no recovery and no automatic business 

cycle which will revive the economy. This bottomless depression will worsen until policies are reformed. The depression 

results from deregulated and globalized financial speculation, especially the $1.5 quadrillion world derivatives bubble. 

The US industrial base has been gutted, and the US standard of living has fallen by almost two thirds over the last four 

decades. We must reverse this trend of speculation, de-industrialization, and immiseration. Current policy bails out 

bankers, but harms working people, industrial producers, farmers, and small business. We must defend civil society and 

democratic institutions from the effects of high unemployment and economic breakdown. We therefore demand: 

1. Measures to reduce speculation and minimize the burden of fictitious capital: End all bailouts of banks and 

financial institutions. Claw back the TARP and other public money given or lent to financiers. Abolish the notion of too 

big to fail; JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other Wall Street zombie banks are insolvent and must 

be seized by the FDIC for chapter 7 liquidation, with derivatives eliminated by triage. Re-institute the Glass-Steagall 

firewall to separate banks, brokerages, and insurance. Ban credit default swaps and adjustable rate mortgages. To generate 

revenue and discourage speculation, levy a 1% Tobin tax (securities transfer tax or trading tax) on all financial 

transactions including derivatives (futures, options, indices, and over the counter derivatives), stocks, bonds, foreign 

exchange, and commodities, especially program trading, high-frequency trading, and flash trading. Set up a 15% reserve 

requirement for all OTC derivatives. Use Tobin tax revenue and a revived corporate income tax to provide immediate tax 

relief to individuals, families, the self-employed, and small business by increasing personal exemptions and standard 

deductions. Stop all foreclosures on primary residences, businesses, and farms for five years or the duration of the 

depression, whichever lasts longer. Set a 10% maximum rate of interest on credit cards and payday loans. Re-regulate 

commodities markets with 100% margin requirements, position limits, and anti-speculation protections for hedgers and 

end users to prevent oil and gasoline price spikes. Enforce labor laws and anti-trust laws against monopolies and cartels. 

Restore individual chapter 11. 

2. Measures to nationalize the Federal Reserve, cut federal borrowing, and provide 0% federal credit for 

production: Seize the Federal Reserve and bring it under the US Treasury as the National Bank of the United States, no 

longer the preserve of unelected and unaccountable cliques of incompetent and predatory bankers. The size of the money 

supply, interest rates, and approved types of lending must be determined by public laws passed and debated openly, 

passed by the congress and signed by the president. Stop US government borrowing from zombie banks and foreigners -- 

let the US government function as its own bank. Reverse current policy by instituting 0% federal LENDING with 

preferential treatment for tangible physical production and manufacturing of goods and commodities, to include industry, 

agriculture, construction, mining, energy production, transportation, infrastructure building, public works, and scientific 

research, but not financial services and speculation. Issue successive tranches of $1 trillion as needed to create 30 million 

union-wage productive jobs and attain full employment for the first time since 1945, reversing the secular decline in the 

US standard of living. Provide 0% credit to reconvert idle auto and other plants and re-hire unemployed workers to build 

modern rail, mass transit, farm tractors, and aerospace equipment, including for export. Extend 0% federal credit for 

production to small businesses like auto and electronics repair shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, tailors, family farms, taxis, 

and trucking. Maintain commercial credit for retail stores. Create an unlimited rediscount guarantee by the National Bank 

for public works projects to provide cash to local banks for bills of exchange pertaining to infrastructure and public works. 

Repatriate the foreign dollar overhang by encouraging China, Japan, and other dollar holders to place orders for US-made 

capital goods and modern hospitals. Revive the US Export-Import Bank. Set up a 10% tariff to protect domestic re- 

industrialization. Nationalize and operate GM, Chrysler, CIT, and other needed but insolvent firms as a permanent public 

sector. Maintain Amtrak and USPS. 

3. Measures to re-industrialize, build infrastructure, develop science drivers, create jobs, and restore a high-wage 

economy: state and local governments and special government agencies modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority will 

be prime contractors for an ambitious program of infrastructure and public works subcontracted to the private sector. To 

deal with collapsing US infrastructure, modernize the US el 

generation, pebble bed, high temperature reactors of 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts each. Rebuild the rail system with 50,000 

miles of ultra-modern maglev Amtrak rail reaching into every state. Rebuild the entire interstate highway system to 21st 

century standards. Rebuild drinking water and waste water systems nationwide. Promote canal building and irrigation. For 

health care, build 1,000 500-bed modern hospitals to meet the minimum Hill-Burton standards of 1946. Train 250,000 

doctors over the next decade. The Davis-Bacon Act will mandate union pay scales for all projects. For the farm sector, 

provide a debt freeze for the duration of the crisis, 0% federal credit for working capital and capital improvements, a ban 

on foreclosures, and federal price supports at 110% of parity across the board, with farm surpluses being used for a new 

Food for Peace program to stop world famine and genocide. Working with other interested nations, invest $100 billion 

each in: biomedical research to cure dread diseases; high energy physics (including lasers) to develop fusion power and 

beyond; and a multi-decade NASA program of moon-Mars manned exploration, permanent colonization, and industrial 

production. These science drivers will provide the technological spin-offs to modernize the entire US economy in the 

same way that the NASA moon shot gave us microchips and computers in the 1960s. These steps will expand and upgrade 

the national stock of capital goods and enhance the real productivity of US labor. Return the federal budget and foreign 

trade to surplus in 5 years or less. 

4. Measures to defend and expand the social safety net: Restore all cuts; full funding at improved levels for Social 

Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, jobless benefits, WIC, Head Start, and related programs. Offer Medicare for 

All to anyone under 65 who wants it at $100 per person per month, with reduced rates for families, students, and the 

unemployed. Pay for this with Tobin tax revenues and TARP clawback, and by ending the Iraq and Afghan wars. Seek to 

raise life expectancy by five years for starters. No rationing or death panels; savings can come only by finding cures. 

Quickly reach a $15 per hour living wage. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and affirm the right to organize. Pass card check to 

promote collective bargaining. 

5. Measures to re-launch world trade and promote world recovery: Create a new world monetary system including 

the euro, the yen, the dollar, and the ruble, plus emerging Arab and Latin American regional currencies, with fixed 

exchange rates and narrow bands of fluctuation enforced by participating governments. Institute clearing and gold 

settlement among member states. Replace the IMF with a Multilateral Development Bank to finance world trade and 

infrastructure. The goal of the system must be to re-launch world trade through exports of high-technology capital goods, 

especially to sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and the poorer parts of Latin America. Promote a world Marshall Plan of 

great projects of world infrastructure, including: a Middle East reconstruction and development program; plans for the 

Ganges-Bramaputra, Indus, Mekong, Amazon, and Nile-Congo river basins; bridge-tunnel combinations to span the 

Bering Strait, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Malacca, the Sicilian narrows, and connect Japan to the Asian 

mainland; second Panama canal and Kra canals; Eurasian silk road, Cape to Cairo/Dakar to Djibouti, Australian coastal, 

and Inter-American rail projects, and more. American businesses will receive many of these orders, which means 

American jobs. 

This program will create 30 million jobs in less than five years. It will end the depression, rebuild the US economy, 

improve wages and standards of living, re-start productive investment, and attain full employment with increased 

levels of capital investment per job. Most orders placed under this program will go to US private sector bidders. 

Because of the vastly increased volume of goods put on the market, inflation will not result. 

A New Model of Education - Guest Post

The Face of Education

Education Has Gone Astray

To get to a certain point we all need some basic instruction, how to read, how to write/type, and basic math. Once we have those skills we can quite easily take over the course of our own education, tailored to our interests and our strengths.

Nothing is more demotivating to a child than having to learn something they are absolutely not interested in and yet are forced to learn. Then why do it?

Why do we have mandated by law instruction until the age 16, when by the age of at least 7 they have acquired the rudimentary skills to continue down the path that they choose and at their own pace?

Think about why our education system is like it is. It is shaped by corporations, curated by government, and mandated by law to produce a particular subset of workers (not thinkers) that fit into the current economic and cultural milieu.

This would be acceptable except for the fact that the system is now failing our children. If the free market guaranteed some form of employment for the time spent in school it would be an equitable trade off.

However, what is happening is that the level of education required by today's corporations is insufficient, the governments are too broke to provide more subsidies and corporations will not step in unless there is a profit to be had.

Hence all further education investments are coming from private individuals to get their children a degree from a university. The result: a hoard of over-educated mail-room clerks.

The over production of young adults with degrees has raised the bar for those seeking employment. Why hire a high school grad, when you can get a University grad for the same price? All this on the dime of the private individual.

Student loans? One of the hardest loans to discharge through bankruptcy, essentially creating a self-reinforcing loop that requires young adults to:
1. Get a degree
2. Take on massive amounts of debt
3. Take the first job offered to allow them to pay that debt

Which drives down the ratio of labour cost to the level of education a company gets.

So why pay for the privilege of having a degree or a diploma when the same education can be had for the price of a library card and a good computer?

Some of the greatest innovators (see links) in history share a common trait, either they were self-taught, or they were kicked/dropped out of school and then self-taught. Schools, as configured, squash innovation and encourage conformity.

http://www.autodidactic.com/profiles/profiles.htm

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_notable_autodidacts


Grades are degrading.

Grades are a shorthand that teachers and employers can use evaluate the quality of conformity attained by the pupil. A student that receives mostly A's and B's is praised while another student that receives mostly C's and D's is looked at as performing at an unacceptable level. Grades are little more than branding, establishing social hierarchies before they are let out into the "real" world.

Creating a situation of scarcity, for example, grading on the curve, creates an environment of competition which discourages information sharing (often referred to as "cheating") which in turn creates an atmosphere of fear of being wrong. The result: a roomful of mediocre students who end up being mediocre adults who take no risks, stand for nothing, all for fear of being wrong.

Children are natural collaborators. Don't believe me? Watch them at play in pre-school environments, you will see them learn about games, structures, songs, in groups and often spontaneously. Ironically this behaviour is one of the first the education system tries to snuff out with rigid formations (desks in a row), rigid schedules (class time length, recess length, occurrence of lunchtime), no talking, and repeated discipline for the offenders (non-conformists) that do not fall within the range of "acceptable" behaviour.

What does a diploma tell you? Or a degree or designation? All it says is that the student knew the material well enough to pass a standardized test. It does not demonstrate or illuminate the passion or adeptness the student possesses with the material. The only way to know how well someone knows their field is to talk to them and better yet to have them talk to others that share their passion and expertise, thus both at once demonstration their ability and maybe learning something more about what they love.

The Way Forward

Provide the basics for our children: reading, writing, and math, which are the bare essentials that provide a platform to acquire more knowledge on their own. In short, once the children are able to absorb and choose the knowledge they want to acquire, then we allow them to do so. No grades are to be given, no diplomas earned, instead the child is allowed to pursue an education path as far as his or her ability allows them to progress.

Initially knowledge would be acquired through a Khan Academy-like environment (http://www.khanacademy.org) where the child watches/reads a section, then answers a number of questions at the end of the chapter, if they are right, then the child progresses to the next level. At some point when the child exhausts a particular path in Khan Academy then he or she "graduates" to partaking in discussion circles/forums where others share the same interest in furthering on the same educational pathway.

As they demonstrate a firmer grasp on the material, the collaborative environment of the discussion circles/forums will stimulate new theories, new material, and new ideas to pursue. As their knowledge increases they in turn reinforce or increase the knowledge of others. The one truth that they will hold is that novelty can come from anywhere and from anyone.

Jamie Scott - The World Today