Brad writes:
More practically, though, I wonder what will be left of the city once the devastation clears away. A variety of people are going to have to leave the city for months on end. What will they do? What happens to their jobs? If they can get by on their savings, and the kindness of family members, good for them. If not—if, say, you live paycheck to paycheck and need a job immediately, well, you're going to need to go to some other town, find work, get an apartment or place to live, and stay there for those intervening months. By the time New Orleans is inhabitable again, how many people will actually drift on back?
True enough. But what of those interim folks? The ones who can get by for a month or so, but then will need something? And what of all those who have businesses in New Orleans and don't want to leave the city?
Well, what about a modern-day WPA?
New Orleans is going to need a lot of rebuilding. And while I agree that it'd probably be smartest to pack up and move the city elsewhere, it's probably not going to happen. But couldn't we hire all those displaced residents to work on the rebuilding? Surely a large amount of what needs to be done is low-skill or easily learned labor. And the government could pay them a slight wage, provide housing and food, and generally give them a purpose and a hand in reconstruction while they wait for their homes to dry out. Otherwise you have an enormous mass of unemployed, bewildered refugees flooding into nearby economies that're totally unprepared for the influx. It'd be a disaster. This'd prove a much cleaner and more sustainable way to occupy them while New Orleans is resurrected.
