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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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