Lambert Strether — The Jobs Guarantee, “Make-Work,” and FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

One of the talking points deployed against a Jobs Guarantee[1] is “make-work.”[2] (I’m not proffering a complete sentence because deployment, in form of a jerking knee, is so fast that complete sentence cannot be emitted in time). This makes me crazy, because I was taught about FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) back in grade school, and while the CCC was not “A job for everyone who wants one,” the work the millions employed by CCC did was most definitely not “make-work.” So in this post, I want to take a quick look at the CCC, because not all readers may be familiar with it, and then take a quick look at what a modern CCC might do. (In other words, I’m recapturing a little history here — even perhaps doing a little bit of a rant — not doing serious policy analysis.)

Naked Capitalism
The Jobs Guarantee, “Make-Work,” and FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
Lambert Strether of Corrente