Creating Jobs

I think about this all the time. Who could spend to create jobs? Jobs would create spending, spending would create activity, activity would create more jobs, the economy would come back to life.

First, the math:

Let's say you hire people at $25,000 a year. So:
10 people = $250,000
100 people = $2.5 million
1,000 people = $25 million
10,000 people = $250 million
100,000 people = $2.5 billion

I have oft heard it said in stories about the economy that a healthy economy would be 100,000 new hires a month. So let's say that was our aim. How much would that cost? Well, 36 billion dollars for one year, and 71 billion dollars for two years. (I originally had thought 24 billion, discounting the .5, which it turns out is kind of significant.)

The government could pay for it. The federal government could hire a million and a half new Americorps employees to work in the nation's schools, tackling hiring and education in one fell swoop.

Or the private sector could pay for it. The top 100 richest Americans (all of which have more than $1bn, I assume)(I'll have to check that) could each contribute between $500m and $10bn to rescue the U.S. economy. It could be argued that the money would quickly come back to them in the form of a reinvigorated consumer economy and stock prices.

And that's an overwhelming plan. If the plan was halved so that it was only $18bn a year, it would still have a huge impact on the economy and wouldn't tax the ultra rich nearly as much.

As I have said many times, the rich in this country could re-invigorate the economy if they chose to, through direct spending. Putting money into Wall Street allows companies to amass giant cash reserves and not spend any of it. Putting people to work puts money immediately into the consumer economy and pumps lifeblood into a system that is struggling for air.

Medicaid Spending

A story in the NY Times talks about how Medicaid spending has decreased but also mentions that - with the Health Care law - the rolls will probably increase in the coming years.

I think the ultra-rich in this country could make a huge difference to this problem. It could work one of two ways: either A, a fund is created to replace medicare, covering a certain number of the poor through direct payments; or B, the fund uses it's money to pay for private insurance for large numbers of the poor.

The idea could be tested easily. Cities have statistics on what are the poorest areas of their metropolises. You could pick a neighborhood - or a group of project buildings - and sign them all up for this program. The fund could work with social agencies and non-profits working with the same population to identify those people in need and make sure they are taken off the federal rolls and aren't double-dipping.

Maybe you could add to the program by building a clinic in the neighborhood or assigning a doctor or two (GPs) to that neighborhood or set of buildings.

Actually, now that I remember, I was thinking of a much more widespread plan that involved people from many more income levels.

I have a friend who earns over two hundred thousand dollars a year. I think he could afford to spend $300 a month on an insurance plan for someone who couldn't afford that insurance themselves. Now, my friend has four children, so that might actually be a bit more than he would rather spend. But I'm sure there are plenty of single people and older couples with grown children (or no children) who could more easily afford to pay that smaller amount to help someone who is struggling.

Maybe I should contact my brother's friend who works for the Dept of Labor and see if he can get me statistics on how many people make between $200,000 and $500,000 a year and then break down those earners by age.

The additional benefit of this plan would be that - if the money was spent on insurance plans for low-income people, the money would be going back into the economy. (I suppose it would be either way, since the direct payments plan would go right into the doctor's budgets.)

The interesting thing would be how this would effect the economy in terms of Wall Street vs. Main Street. I say that because I assume that most of these people with multiple billions of dollars have huge investment portfolios. If they were to liquidate $2-$4 billion dollars, I assume it would have an effect on Wall Street. Much the same as if Warren Buffet were to take $20bn out of Wall Street and use it to fund a private jobs program for the country.

Crowdsourcing TV

Here's my question: why hasn't someone come up with crowdsourcing TV yet?

Now, my definition of crowdsourcing TV would be different from what you'd expect, because essentially what I'm going to outline is a subscription service for a particular show; but you'll understand why I use the terms in a minute.

The other day I was reading a Yahoo story about "shows that are in trouble;" that is, shows that have low ratings and will probably be cancelled. I have had a number of shows that I loved that got cancelled far before their time ("Journeyman," "Surface," "Firefly," "[Something] on the Sunset Strip"). I've also read stories about shows that got saved by viewer enthusiasm and outcry; I think "Jericho" was one, but probably the most famous (and successful) is Family Guy.

I've always thought, when I show gets cancelled, "if I had the money, I'd pay for it to keep going." I think at the time I had heard some show cost $1m an episode to produce, and I thought to myself: "If I had 50 million dollars; I might pay to save a show."

So what if I didn't need 50 million dollars? What if I only needed five dollars, because there were a million other people who also wanted to save the show? And since five million @ a million dollars an episode = five episodes, I could pay five dollars a month and keep the show on.

OR: I could make a deal with the company and say: "I'll pay for half the show if you pay for half. I'm bringing down your costs incredibly, why don't you make my dollars go further?" Then, I get ten shows for five dollars and I'm only paying that every other month!

Do you see how quickly this works?

The funny thing is that I don't know if fan networks are as solid these days, even with all the interconnectivity. For instance: could the Facebook fans of "The Mob Doctor" (one of the shows Yahoo! thinks will die first) set up an Indie-a-go-go account and raise a million dollars in dribs and drabs and offer to pay for half the costs of the show in order to sustain it? (Maybe they could pay for advertising and then vote to sponsor particular non-profit ads.)

It would really be a direct way of putting production into the hands of consumers and would give the studios and networks a way to save costs on production. People would literally vote with their dollars.

Of course, there are multiple questions:

1. Are viewers too fickle? If this show dies, is there enough entertainment around that they'll just skip to something else and forget about it?
2. How do you create a structure of trust, so that A) you know you're not getting screwed by the company (who says they won't just take your money and cancel the show?) and B) there is someone to make decisions, so that the mob doesn't descend into chaos?

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There was another idea I had concerning cancelled show that people loved and that was to turn them into comic books or graphic novels. If the show could prove it had enough fans, the production company could solicit backing to create a graphic novel series that would continue the story (or at least take it to a more natural conclusion). I thought of this while watching an recent series called "Kyle XY." While there were a lot of problems with the show, I still got caught up in the mystery of the story and wanted to see how it "ended." Unfortunately even the extras on the DVDs (which we found on YouTube) just had the producers talking about vague ideas of how the show would have developed without any specific storylines. If they had a different medium they might have been able to keep the writers employed and kept the fans on the hook for another season or two.

Which brings up another point: could you just ask for fan funding and then move the show to the web? The people who pay for it put in their money upfront (which means they don't control access; anyone can watch the show), which they do hopefully because they love the show. Then the show continues to get made and has the possibility of gaining more fans and maybe being picked up again. There's all kinds of things that could happen.

Crowdsourcing is an exciting new phenomenon and I'd like to see it go further and be used in new and creative ways.