With the nation desperate for new jobs, the Obama Administration would be wise to reestablish the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), says Frank Ackerman, senior economist and director of the Climate Economics Group of the Stockholm Environment Institute U.S. Center at Tufts University.

 

“Nothing contributed as much to the Democrats’ midterm electoral losses as the high rate of unemployment; the party in power routinely gets clobbered when lots of people are out of work on Election Day,” notes Ackerman.

 

The CCC employed young men when long-term unemployment was a stubborn problem, like now, and it greatly improved the nation’s infrastructure along the way. “The CCC planted 4 billion trees. It built 63,000 buildings, 125,000 miles of roads, 47,000 bridges, and 28,000 miles of park trails. It installed 89,000 miles of telephone lines and 5,000 miles of water lines,” Ackerman writes.

 

Funding the CCC did mean adding to the federal deficit, he admits, “but not by much.” He claims it cost $3 billion to run the program over nine years, “equivalent to an average of less than $6 billion a year in today’s dollars.” This is a drop in the bucket compared to either the Wall Street bailout or President Obama’s stimulus program.

 

The CCC provided six-month jobs for 600,000 young Americans at its peak. The young men were required to send most of their wages home to their parents. The CCC also hired 30,000 teachers to give classes to the workers, most of whom had not completed high school.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

A Lesson in US Job Creation: The Civilian Conservation Corps (by Frank Ackerman, Triple Crisis)

Is It Time to Bring Back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)