The following exchange from Lyndon LaRouche's January 30th webcast, elaborates on how LaRouche envisages the involvement of skilled auto workers, currently being thrown on the scrapheap, in the productive employment, CCC-style program he has proposed:

Franklin County, Ohio auto union official: "I hope we can re-open the auto industry to build infrastructure and nuclear power plants. How can we do that?"

LaRouche: What we have is, we have a problem here; we have a shortage of technology, working technology, in the United States today. We are losing, we no longer have the industries which we once had. They have been destroyed. The labor force has been scattered. The machine tools have been destroyed in large degree. The territories which existed as floor space in the former auto and aircraft industries, and similar kinds of industries, don't exist any more. They were dissolved, especially from the beginning of 2006 onward. A betrayal of the United States, which was done by the U.S. Congress after the year 2005, the beginning of 2006.

Now, what we have out there is, we have human beings, especially machine-tool-design people, and people like that, who are crucial. And what we have to do is think about that. What I've intended to do, and I've made proposals in that direction, is my so-called recovery plan for the United States.

My conception of the CCC-equivalent for today—and I've used the term CCC, because it is a tradition in our people—all these young people out there, who have essentially no real skill, or very little, and who don't have the social savvy to be able apply skills if they have them—they're not socially responsible; they don't understand what responsibility to be on a job is. They don't understand that it's not just getting something. I'm against a "jobs policy," because the jobs policy means a dumping policy. You take a bunch of people, you don't do anything to make them more productive, you have some kind of an operation housing them, and they don't improve. They never become productive. So, I'm not for a jobs program; I'm for a productive employment program. First of all, to take people who are productive, and make sure that they have a chance to be suitably employed. And to provide those who are not productive in skills and develop them into people who have productive skills.

Now, how do you do that? You start with a CCC-type operation. You have a list of people who are retired machine-tool designers, other kinds of things, auto industry and related. Now, you want them on deck, because that's your training cadre. They will be doing two things. They will be heading up teams of people who are going to be assimilated into employment, because they have the skills to direct it. They know what the score is; they know how to do the job. They provide the supervision, training and guidance, on the job.

You also have them as screening, as training. You've got young guys out there. Now, they all look terrible. Nobody would want to employ them, who knew what they do. But we want them employed anyway, so we're going to have to have a little transition here, where we can get them into employable condition.

So, we take the CCC formula, which we used for people who were not quite as badly off, as many of these young people are today, back in the 1930s. You put them in a training program—like 16 years of age, 18 years of age, up to 25; that age-range. And you get them out there, away from where they lived, because the habits of degeneracy are associated with the places where they lived. Get them out of there! Take the persons away from the infection. The neighborhood is the infection. Get them out of the so-called " 'hood." If you can't do that, you can't do a damned thing with them, except things you don't want to do. So therefore, get them out of the neighborhood, get them out of their environment, which is the disease. Their environment is the disease. Right? Get them out in camps someplace; not just to herd them, but to give them a new environment, where they can develop new habits. Get them away from the contamination with old habits. That's your job!

Now, you look at them; you've got these young guys. What do you do with them? Well, you get a relationship with them. You get them where they understand that you're their friend, that you intend to do something good for them. They may not agree at the time, but they understand that you have a good attitude toward them, and that you think that the old " 'hood" business is not good for them. And they're going to squawk, because many of them are on drugs. And if you can't get them away from where they can get drugs, you're not going to get anywhere with them. They have some sexual habits which are not too good, either. You don't want that.

So therefore, you're going to try to give them a chance, a second life, away from the life which was destroying them. And you're going to treat them as if they were your children. You're not going to mother them, that's not a good idea. There's a word for that—but don't do that. What you have to do is, give them a new life. And just point out what the problems are; they know what the problems are, but it's like the old socks they never washed. They can't get rid of using them. So, make them wash their socks.

Now, if they decide that they want to have a life—and that's the whole point—and I think the point in this case is, you've got to say, "We're going to save a large percentage of these people, because we know we're going to fail in many cases. The cases are too far gone. We're going to try; we're going to be humane. But what we're really shooting for, we're trying to find the core of a labor force, a future labor force, among these young guys. So, we're going to give them every opportunity by giving them people who can guide them in acquiring the skills which attract them." And the thing is, you're going to give them a new form of play. You're going to offer them a chance to play a game which is more attractive and less risky than the old kinds of games. And you're going to talk about what the objective is to learning how to play this game. And being young people, they will respond to games. So, you have to give them an environment in which they can gradually make the transition into serious self-training, self-development. Some people you will find, are more or less immediately ready to go. Maybe one in ten, two out of ten, or whatever. So, you take that.

Now you have the people who are the former engineers, machine-tool designers and so forth, who are now unemployed. Well, they are qualified to give these young guys access to the skills and outlook which are needed for productive employment. And it's that relationship; you're getting a generational tradition, you're getting a leap from a generation which is being destroyed.

The youth born in the past 25 years have been thrown into a dead society, and have adapted to a dead, corrupt society. Therefore, you've got to give them a chance to come into a new society. What do you do then? You give them a cadre, an older cadre from a previous generation, who had these kinds of skills, and who will look at this as equivalent to the same generation as might have been their children. You're going to help them make that transition into a useful life. And what's going to be important for them, is the dignity they get, by making the transition.

The biggest problem will be drugs. And for that, and other reasons, you want to start to move them away from that, into encampments, under supervision and selection, and then move them, as they progress, into job opportunities that you know about and you're creating.

- The Large Projects We Need -

So, for example, we're going to create a national high-speed rail system. We're not going to get rid of the automobile, but we're going to use it a lot less. We're going to use high-speed mass transit systems. So, the first thing we're going to do is, we're going to say, "We're going to build a national high-speed transit system, along with a rivers and water management system." These are major projects. Now, these projects are not just self-contained. They depend upon a supply of services, productive skills from local industries. So now, you have government credit, which on the one hand is used for the government program, for, say, the high-speed rail and similar kinds of programs, water programs. Now, you have the people who are working in private concerns, or firms which are being established through government credit, as private concerns, employing key leading figures in those firms who have the requisite skills for the job. And you are going to start building things, which cut into the high-speed rail, water systems, and power systems, immediately.

Now, you're going to start creating industries in local communities, along the routes that these water systems and other transport systems are going to go—and power systems. You're going to create those routes. You want to have in every community—you don't want to have commuting 50 miles a day back and forth to work, as a way of life. You want to rebuild the idea of the towns and cities. Not big, super-cities, not megalopolises, but reasonably sized towns and cities, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000 population at most. And you're going take these cities, which are in the pathway of these projects, like rail projects and water projects. So, you're going to have government credit available, under a Glass-Steagall system, of Federal credit, which will actually provide the credit as capital, needed to produce these new industries.

The public projects, the large-scale public projects, become the driver for fomenting the development of the industries which are needed to act as vendors to these large projects, in the area which the projects are going through. And that's the way you do it.

So you take a mass of people, a mass of essentially unemployed, useless people, and you sort the thing out a bit, to try to save everybody you can save, who wants to be saved from this Hell they've been living in. You get them into a situation where they find a new identity—not as trash! And that's the way you do it. Nobody on this project is trash. No one on this project will be trash! "You're going to be somebody." That's our objective. And you're going to make a contribution to society that you don't have to be ashamed of. And you're going to have a chance at a good life, and hopefully a long one. Not getting killed in some thing around the corner. Eh?

And it's that simple, in my view. Use our sense. We had these experiences—I mean, those of you who are as old as I am, and there are, unfortunately, too few of us. Something happened, they died out on me, all these old friends of mine.

But we have to create that kind of process. It's the kind of thing that Franklin Roosevelt tried to do in his own way, in his own time. It's not quite the same, today, but the principle is the same. We just have to design the way we apply the principle to fit the circumstances. But the point is, is we have to combine saving our young people, who are being destroyed, saving our skilled people, who have been unemployed and rendered useless—put these two things together with a common solution. One: Federal projects like water projects and transportation projects, as such. And then combine that with the fact that these things need, in every community they pass through, they need supporting industries for the things that those projects will require in that area.

So in that way, you have a sense of forming a plan, on a credit system—a plan for re-assimilating the unemployed of the older category, and those who are questionably employed, or not employed, among the younger ones. Take that view. Give yourself 25 years. I'll do all I can in the meantime.

RELATED VIDEOS

RELATED UPDATES

EDITOR'S CHOICE