Job Economics Training – What, How and Why?

A recent Personal Liberty poll suggests people don’t want the economic bailout, but don’t understand why.

The poll had over 130,000 online respondents. I personally took five minutes to participate in this poll through a Congress.org portal after writing to my Vermont leaders. I can’t speak for the demographic makeup of those polled – I wasn’t required to furnish any of that personal information.

81% agree that a government bailout is NOT the answer to America’s financial crisis.

77% believe the American taxpayers should NOT have to foot the bailout bill, because America “is too far in debt already.”

In addition to that, 14% do NOT favor the bailout because they do not feel taxpayers should be accountable for the private sector.

This is an overwhelming majority of sentiment. Yet, the bailout and stimulus packages will likely go through against the will of the governed.

What I found most interesting in this poll is that for all of the conviction against the bailout – a majority of these same respondents (63%) are “undecided” on whether or not the bailout will “ultimately rescue our country's financial system.”

I’ve observed this phenomenon throughout all of this bailout talk: people are against the bailout and government stimulus – but they don’t quite understand why.

This country has been through this scenario before. We keep hearing that this is the worst economic period since the Great Depression. Has anyone stopped to do a quick fact check? Did you know that in 2008 the GDP contracted by 3.8%?

When was there a worse contraction than this other than the Great Depression? It’s never been this bad, you say?

Believe it or not, 1982. That’s right, only less than thirty years ago we faced a contraction of 6.4% of GDP. Further history lessons of this period will reveal that a bailout did not help America recover from that situation.

Of course, that bit of GDP information is not the whole story, yet it serves as an example that helps us get to the heart of the matter: Americans don’t take the time to gather the facts and understand the situation when it comes to the economy. We tend to jump to irrational conclusions. This was a critical problem in the eyes of those who, after the war, founded the TWI Foundation. A problem so profound that TWIF felt its role was to ensure that every American understood, at a minimum, what the role of every individual actually is in the American economy. They did this by creating a Job Economics Training program, patterned after the other J-skill programs. Here is the link to a retyped version of the manual. I’ve recreated the manual in its original content. Nothing has changed. Pun intended.

Job Economics Training Manual

Whether you agree or disagree with the role each and every one of us must have in our economy, I encourage you to read through this manual and try to understand the basics of how our economy is designed to work – and how we are currently going down a road we know will lead us nowhere, but we just don’t quite understand why.

Research Note: I had originally found this manual in archives of Lowell Mellon (founder of TWI, Inc.) at the Western Reserve Library at Case Western University. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get copies of this at that time and have been wondering what little tidbits lie in that manual.

Thankfully, Mark Warren of Tesla2 spent much time and energy at the National Archives and struck gold. A very special thanks to Mark Warren for going above and beyond the call of duty and bringing this extraordinary manual to the public!