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Comment by joemazerino | Hacker News Reader

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Most of that debt was originated in Middle East conflicts, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the COVID pandemic, and tax cuts for the wealthy. This sounds like a great idea that is cost effective to connect interested folks to efforts, very similar to a startup accelerator's online forum with job listings.

Anyone who complains about the debt and doesn't propose ending the Trump tax cuts isn't serious. Or raising taxes to pay for retirement of Boomers which we've known would need to do for decades.

Also, there is a strong argument that we should be borrowing as much as possible while we can to forego the bigger future expenses of climate change. The US has 1TW of electric generation capacity; borrowing $2T to build wind and solar would be very good investment.

Are there any figures suggesting it will actually be "cost effective"? Neither the White House release or the AP article mentioned the budget for the program, or what employing 20,000 activists would cost.

It's a good question, and I'll have to do some more research to "show my work." If you look at the opportunities available, these all look likes roles that would already exist in various federal agencies (Dept of Energy, USDA, Forest Service, Army Corp of Engineers, FEMA) so I would not run right to "this are 20k net new open roles" but rather a reconfiguration of work distribution and candidate funnel (similar to how US Digital Service ingests technologists and associated folks, weighs and measures, and then distributes throughout government agencies in need of exceptional, motivated talent).

TFA doesn't say, but another comment linked to an article that says

"After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps"

which means there is no new spending here.

Nobody was worried about national debt when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The fact that we cannot solve the climate crisis by dropping bombs on bad guys doesn't make it any less of an existential threat.

Job training and energy investments tend to have a positive payback on gdp, which is typically how government debt is viewed.

Solar installers help prepare the power grid for more solar, HVACs, and more electric car production, small local battery backups which hopefully with the inflation reduction act incentives are produced domestically. (Consider the damage from California and Hawaiian utility related infrastructure fires as another way an updated grid helps)

Reducing oil and gas needs for domestic energy production facilities increases oil exports.

I recall the US Federal Corp for Solar Energy, because a young colleague (at the time) went to a year of training for it. However, once the training was done and he was a year older (and paid?) new President Ronald Reagan cut it completely in his first acts when elected.

Your confusion is most likely your expectation that anybody is trying to resolve “the debt”. Instead, you’re demonstrating that it’s an endlessly useful political talking point. See you next time.

The level of debt we have is fine, and we could have a lot more and still be fine. The idea that the debt is a number worth minimizing is just bad economics.

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