okay national service what do you think about it i'm sorry i forgot i forgot your name already
 	
 	
 		
 
 		Lee
 	
 	
 		Lee okay Lee
 	
 	
 		oh well i think ideally people should want to do that automatically and that they should want to do what
 		you know meshes with how they feel and what they're good at and they shouldn't be funneled into a mandatory sort of a thing
 	
 	
 		um-hum
 		um-hum um well
 		you're not going to get a whole lot of disagreement from me  none of the people that i talk to on this project disagree with me very much which kind of surprises me
 	
 	
 		oh well in that case i think what this country needs is a good mandatory program to uh
 	
 	
 		
 
 	
 	
 		you know get people just thinking hey this is normal it's normal to do good you know to be civic minded you know just so they won't you know everybody will just think
 	
 	
 		um-hum
 		um
 		hum
 		well think of how much we have to pay for it i mean i'm you know i think if it's voluntary you get the people that want to be there
 	
 	
 		this is the way things are and it
 	
 	
 		they'll do well if it's mandatory you get everybody you get people that don't want to don't want to do work like that and they'll goof off or or sell drugs to their coworkers or something like that um
 	
 	
 		well i'm not looking at the mandatory uh program as a cost effective way of getting this stuff done i'm looking at it as a way to shape people's psyches into thinking that public service is a good thing
 	
 	
 		hum
 	
 	
 		of course the program would have to work or else they'll think yeah public service another boondoggle you know they'll be sitting there working on the job doing nothing
 	
 	
 		yeah i'm
 		well think of it yeah yeah i i but i wonder about that the the mere fact that it isn't cost effective do you think that that if if it's not cost effective do you think that people are going to be enthused about it
 	
 	
 		oh well certainly the people that do volunteer to do all sorts of things aren't thinking cost effective
 	
 	
 		well
 		you've got you've got a far fewer number what percentage of of of people do you think now do something like that um
 	
 	
 		well i think everything that people you know what do people do they polish their cars right why do they do it because
 		they think they're going to be saving lots of money on repainting and having the car last that much longer no because they want it to look really sharp
 	
 	
 		hum
 	
 	
 		not a cost effective thing you know they raise money to build a new church because they want to put eight zillion filigrees there because it's cost effective or because they need the space
 	
 	
 		well i don't  if you need the space i suppose it's cost effective because
 		you can't get along with the old with with the old one but um  no i i and it just seems to me that that that once you get everybody involved there's there's what there's eight million is it uh
 		uh kids college uh turning eighteen every year i think it's about that might be a little bit lower now but uh
 		that's an awful lot to to bring into a program you got to have eight million jobs available you've got to have administrators for eight million jobs that would be tremendously expensive
 		not you know not to forget the cost of putting all of those kids in uh in in in non market uh enterprises
 		enterprises for for for a couple of years uh that's going to delay their entry into the work force delay the time when they can begin paying taxes too so so the impact is going to be double there i um
 		just don't see
 	
 	
 		well you have to define the purpose of the program you know is there excess labor and that's why you're doing this
 	
 	
 		no
 	
 	
 		i mean what there's sort of both excess excess bodies available to labor but then there's not enough skilled labor
 	
 	
 		
 
 		i don't know i
 		i think the
 	
 	
 		so at the same time you have too many people who want to work or too many people who could work and not enough people who can work
 	
 	
 		yeah uh i i grant to that but if that's the case then it needn't then then you don't have a mandatory you don't need a mandatory program to bring everybody into national service
 		you just need a program for the people that haven't gotten anything gotten anything better to do and i think that might be a good idea although again then you get the kind of people who are likely to sell drugs to their coworkers et cetera
 	
 	
 		well they did this in uh the depression they invented what the CCC
 	
 	
 		right
 	
 	
 		and uh they had a whole bunch of people go out west and dig ditches and plant trees and
 	
 	
 		that's true but but i think that was different uh in at least three respects first of all
 		um it was not a mandatory program if you didn't have another job you could join it you were not required to but it was a way to get a paycheck so people did join it
 		secondly the time of the depression was just vastly different people were not as cynical about society about government and about the nation as they are now um so they didn't react negatively as many people would today
 		and thirdly the economic conditions were different it was a big drain on the Treasury during the depression as well it's not clear that it made it any easier to get out of the depression