The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a relief measure established in 1935 by executive order as the Works Progress Administration, and was redesigned in 1939 when it was transferred to the Federal Works Agency. Headed by Harry L. Hopkins and supplied with an initial congressional appropriation of $4,880,000,000, it offered work to the unemployed on an unprecedented scale by spending money on a wide variety of programs, including highways and building construction, slum clearance, reforestation, and rural rehabilitation. So gigantic an undertaking was inevitably attended by confusion, waste, and political favoritism, yet the 'pump-priming' effect stimulated private business during the depression years and inaugurated reforms that states had been unable to subsidize.

More:
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/wpa/wpa_info.html

Lewis Black thought of this some years back. Can't post the video here due to language.

Millions on extended unemployment benefits, soon to be maxed out. No real job creation on the horizon. Millions will walk straight from ended unemp. benefits to the welfare rolls.

While this is an excellent method to create a population that is beholding to government for their existence, it really craps on human dignity.

Stuff from the last WPA is still around. Artists were included in the WPA. Many businesses can trace their beginnings to that era.

The alternative? Welfare currently expects able-bodied individuals to seek job training. For what jobs, lawncare? Is there a single block in the city outside the DID that has a sidewalk that couldn't use help?

Union labor concerns would have to be dealt with, some good could come from that exercise alone.

OMG, is this a proper way to wake up? I'll be LMAO all day.

Excellent idea, and thanks for the LB vid. That guy is great!

You spend money putting the unemployed to work. They get a paycheck, experience, and learn a trade while doing something that will benefit and contribute to the success of the nation.

But what good are educated, and self-sufficient people to a government that wants to have absolute control over everything and everyone? No good at all.

Keep them poor and stupid, and keep them subservient to their master.

My father worked in the WPA. There was no loss of dignity for him. He had 3 children to feed. He was proud of what he did. Several of the buildings he helped build are still being used. One interesting fact: The WPA and CCC constructed hundreds of thousands of outhouses all over the country. One was in the backyard of the house in which I grew up. We used it as storage shed. It had a concrete base. Many of them are still around.

He made around $40 a month. That was great wages, especially when there were few jobs anyway.

Sure, it was akin to public welfare, but people WORKED. Just because Uncle Sam was paying you; it shouldn't matter.

The CCC performed much the same function with single men. My father-in-law spent two years in two different camps in Nebraska. He was also very proud of the fact that he could send $25.00 to his destitute parents who lived in the Dust Bowl. He talked about that experience a lot. It was one of the most important and fulfilling periods of his life.

You hearken back to a time when two man saws, axes, and steam derricks were used by loggers. A time when road graders were horse drawn. A time when we had the capacity to make and sell goods to the world when money started to flow again.
We may have reached a tipping point brought about by Wall Street greed where we have gutted so much of industrial America that we can never come back.
There was a time when Blue Collar American could count of Democrats like FDR, LBJ and Bill Clinton to defend us against the predators, not any more.
With the advent of Barack Obama, Max Baucus, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid we have been thrown to the wolves for thirty pieces of K Street silver.
We had a chance to have a president in the mold of an FDR but some of you just don't like women in positions of authority.