President-elect Obama's stated plans to require community service from schoolchildren and college students strikes me as the kind of plan that will never be implemented as described.
However, if we're going impose corvée labor on American citizens in peacetime, I hope it's not all wasted on after school youth programs and such. If we're going to have millions of man-hours available annually, I really think we should build something more like this:
No, not on the Mexican border. Maybe around the SF Bay Area...
Actually I could use a fence around my back yard. How do I put in my order? I figure there has to be a form somewhere--you know, like the one AIG surely filled out? I may be opposed in principle to the ongoing bipartisan orgy of spending, but I assume that I haven't gotten my cut yet because Obama is still deciding which teens and twenty-somethings will be doing my yard work for the next...
*checks his taxes*
...seventy-three years or so?
Posted by: Kenneth Pike | 09 November 2008 at 00:39
Maybe you can use *your* 100 hours a year while you work on that Ph.D. to get that fence! ~_^
Posted by: Cory | 12 November 2008 at 23:15
Heh... silly Cory. You don't pay for a Ph.D. They pay you! It's like getting a certificate of achievement after five years on the job (that job being teaching, research, and writing), only it's the kind of certificate you actually keep.
But, if they want to forgive my Law School debt in exchange for me landscaping my yard? I'm down with that. d^_^b
Posted by: Kenneth Pike | 17 November 2008 at 23:49
I'm thinking there's a business opportunity here... How can we employ millions of indentured high school students in a task that is nominally charitable, but also highly profitable for us?
Posted by: Dan | 18 November 2008 at 01:24