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The return of the term "shovel ready."

Of Shovels, Spades, and Scoops - West Texas Organic Gardening


Former Vice President Joseph Biden, in a recent announcement of his economic plan, used the phrase "shovel ready." There are lots of shovel ready jobs in building infrastructure.

One might argue that this is a time in which all liberty loving folks should be directed all their/our fire at the Orange Dynast, not at Joe. Still, I have to have a go at this unfortunate phrase.

Politicians talk about "shovel ready" jobs because they want to convey the impression that it is easy for public spending to put people to work. "There are jobs to be done, we [the clique making this claim today] know what they are, and some of it is as simple as pointing a new hire to a shovel, then pointing him to the place where the hole needs to be dug."

Biden should remember the phrase "shovel ready," because he and former President Obama used that phrase in their own campaigning in 2008. They won. Those public investment jobs turned out to be tricky to create after all. Eventually, President Obama admitted he shouldn't have used the phrase, even saying there is no such thing as shovel ready.

The phrase seems to have originated as a fantasy reconstruction of the interstate highway gravy train of the '50s. Ike's administration brought in contractors, who brought in subcontractors and so on down the line. Somewhere, some sub-sub-contractor must actually have said to some new hire, "there is the shovel." And a cliche was born.

But should we really look back on that as a job-creating Eden to which return is desired?  We were essentially dedicating ourselves as a country to the cult of the single-user automobile. Not the "family" automobile, because in 'Murrica any household with more than one adult aspires to have more than one car. Ike's highways brought in massive carbon emissions, suburban sprawl, dependence on foreign sources of energy -- essentially everything that ails us. But it did teach us that job creation is easy! Boy howdy. 

Anyway, setting aside anarcho-capitalism and even thinking "inside the box," one should observe that the Federal Highway Administration says it no longer uses the phrase "shovel ready" as a project classification. And when those in charge of creating jobs are looking for something easy, something shovel ready, they are NOT concerning themselves with whether what they are doing is productive.

"Hey you! Short guy! take this shovel and dig a hole. And hey you! tall guy. Stand ready, when short guy takes a break, fill this hole back in again."
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