For example, in the UK the labour intensive parts of the farming sector (e.g. fruit picking, etc.) have evolved through a particular arc:

We'll start with a baseline where this temporary seasonal work was done by a combination of locals (who either undertook other work during other seasons, or scraped by in the black economy and/or the dole) and travelling workers, some of whom were like the locals, others were teenagers and students filling in on a temporary basis.

Historically, a significant number of the travelling farm workers in the UK were actually from Ireland. In some ways, these are the first wave of immigrants.

The second wave came from the original EU periphery (e.g. Portugal, Spain) and the third wave from the new EU (e.g. Poland).

What ties the first 3 waves together is an economic model, where the travelling workers spend the off-season (absent other work) "back home" in an area where living costs are significantly lower. This allows the farm bosses to pay less and has seen the exit of the local workers and travellers and teenagers/students from the rural economy.

All this has been amplified by the arrival of fourth wave illegal immigrants who are often controlled and exploited by handlers who bring them into the country and "manage" them in rural work. Naturally enough, such exploitation has depleted real wages even further.

santiago has been doing research in the USA and finding different issues - so I conclude there are wide variations.

So, 2, no it would not cause problems.  The "Clinton years" are looked at nostalgically in the US as the high point of US economic history.

During this time, none other than Fed Chair Alan Greenspan derided the idea that you had to have inflation when unemployment was essentially zero.  Zero unemployment was Greenspan's explicit objective, and his quantity-theory-of-money argument was that a growing economy means an economy with more things chasing fewer currency units, and thus deflationary, not inflationary.

It is a well established fact in economics that creating jobs in transportation infrastructure and construction provide very high job multipliers, which means for every job funded by a government expenditure, at least 4-5 additional jobs are created in the economy through residual demand.  However, most economists, regardless of political stripe, agree that, long term, the best return in terms of jobs and economic output for an investment of additional resources is always education, particularly early, pre-kindergarten education.  

The main reason a student teacher ratio should be constrained doesn't have to do with money constraints but rather with the fact that student teacher ratios are not a very good indicator of educational success generally. Rather, currency expenditures per student are.  Some places need more teachers, but other places need more of other resources.  A country with very high educational achievement currently, however, can expect less benefit from additional investments in education.

I don't think it is true that safety and maintenance are lacking in general, but rather in some specific places.  That this is true can be seen by the fact we are objectively safer now than ever before.  Faults in this respect are going to be location specific.  I don't think we can even say that reliability is less.  Additional resources in such areas just increases overhead and are only beneficial in times of low employment.  They will be significant drags on economic activity if expected during periods of high employment as well, which is likely to happen as standards develop by applying too many resources during high employment periods.  How to encourage sufficient maintenance of public infrastructure has been a constant economic problem, however, due to the principal-agent problem.  That's why privatization (or as it is called now, "public-private partnerships") have been so popular and so controversial in various places and times.  Privatization works when government operators are either too incompetent, corrupt, or politically paralyzed to fund the appropriate maintenance, but in other contexts it is just as often the private operators who are so and there is no reason to believe that one is generally better than the other.

On your last point, direct, rather than general, government expenditures to increase employment in needed areas such as transportation infrastructure in a given geography, rather than general programs to increase employment for an entire class of worker, is the best solution and would avoid the problem of increasing labor costs in areas where labor availability is already a problem while unemployment remains high in other places.

The capping of electrical costs from wind generation, due to the merit order effect, would be the equivalent of a significant tax cut for all and is the sort of 'self liquidating' investment towards which good public policy should aim and moving urban electrical distribution underground in storm prone urban areas would minimize lost production due to power outages greatly reduce cleanup costs. The additional economic activity which this would generate, including the 'multiplier' of which santiago spoke, is just what is currently needed in the USA. Combining such programs with increased public support for education and health care delivery would move the economy towards growth and full employment.

The biggest obstacles to pursuing such a plan are the power of incumbent fossil fuel suppliers and the power of the financial 'disservice' industry. The public needs to become aware of the difference between a 1960 style financial service sector which primarily provided inter-mediation between available capital and needed productive investments and the present 'disservice' industry, which primarily provides rent extraction to drive ever further rapidly increasing and socially destructive disparities of wealth. In the current environment anything that might have once been considered 'good public policy' now seems utopian.

My sense is that shifting $200 to $300 billion/year from increased tax revenue from the wealthy, reduced defense expenditures and decreased tax expenditures on current economic incumbents might be sufficient to accomplish the needed boost towards sustainable growth and all of these proposals support reductions in greenhouse gases.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

There are also 7.3 million in prison.

You can't be me, I'm taken

1. Higher wages do not create price inflation. Rent-seeking does. So, full employment is possible purely from economic point of vuew.

2. Not likely. But we don't need "full emploment". We only need distribution of wealth.

3. Yes. Real estate markets, natural monopolies, health care, rersource rents, banks = fire sector, more or less.

4. If people don't have housing, do you give them housing or work at pharao's pyramids? (is a relevant question).

5. Depends whether government programs create inflation or not.

6. I am skeptical about that. Why would government money allocate itself in the end diffrently than private money? (We would get housing bubble, not full employment.)

7. By public ownership.

8. It's about wages. Rural sector does not pay enough compared to other business.