I wonder how long...?

I wonder how long the unemployment must stay at its high levels before people start calling on the federal government to directly create jobs itself.

Read his memoir, An American Life, and you will also find Reagan referring to the Works Progress Administration, among the biggest government jobs programs of all time, as “one of the most productive elements” of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Read accounts of Reagan’s tenure as California governor and you will find him proposing, in 1971, that a WPA-style public works program replace the state’s welfare apparatus.
—Thomas Frank.  “More Government, Please!”  Harper’s Magazine.  December 2011, page 10.

But if we are so concerned about job creation, why not [have the government] just create jobs?...We have waited for them [read: the job creators of the private sector] long enough.  It is time we took the business of job creation into our own hands.
—Thomas Frank.  “More Government, Please!”  Harper’s Magazine.  December 2011, pages 10-11.  Frank was referring to the government hiring workers.

By and large, the things they built [FDR’s New Deal] are treasured today.  Indeed, there was a genius and grandeur to their far-flung labors.  The Roosevelt Administration dealt with unemployment by putting murals in post offices, by bringing electricity to deepest Appalachia, by paying artists to paint, theater directors to state plays, and penniless authors to assemble collections of folklore and write a famous series of guidebooks.
—Thomas Frank.  “More Government, Please!”  Harper’s Magazine.  December 2011, page 11.  Frank was referring to the government hiring workers.