Even this amount, however, assumes that everything the program produces would be given away for free. If anything at all were charged for the goods and services produced, the program s funding needs would be reduced, very possibly to less than zero. This level of output could include child care not only for program participants but for other working parents. There is no shortage of work that needs to be done. The problem is having the political will to translate real needs into real jobs.
Account also needs to be taken of the likely counter-cyclic effect of such a jobs program.
In the period studied, almost half of the estimated ten-year funding deficit would have been incurred in the recession years of 1982 and 1983. A jobs program that offered employment to all job-seekers unable to find work would be a powerful automatic stabilizer. If it had been in place during the early 1980 s, the deep recession of that period almost surely would have been moderated. This would have reduced the program s cost, but a bigger payoff for society would have come in the form of higher aggregate income levels. This is not to say the recession would not have occurred if a comprehensive jobs program had been in place.