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• Tuesday, December 2, 2008 05:09 AM

  shopping

  You propose a WPA-style solution to our economic problems. I concur. Infrastructure is seriously messed up, and it only makes sense to do something which at once employs people and adds value to the common enterprise.

  The one additional suggestion I will make is that the new WPA equivalent include a massive program on the space effort. Sure, many of the jobs demand high technical expertise. But for every engineer, there must be ten jobs that need doing that an engineer is too highly trained to do. I say space because that is the one area no one is concentrating on and in which we can again become a leader. We could achieve a regular space-faring ability within ten years, and become a leader among nations again.

  In my opinion, it is a bad sign when a troubled government retreats from its initiatives of exploration and discovery, as the U. S. has done ever since the Apollo program. In my opinion, the argument that it costs too much to go to space when we have so many problems here is fallacious. (The whole point of a WPA approach would be to lessen the cost, incidentally.) The point is fresh thought, fresh discovery, not grudging contraction while we waste more and more money on intractable situations.

  Plan to recommend this approach on Obama's website.

  —hontonoshijin Read hontonoshijin's other letters
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