I think if you look at the current unemployeed population and the financial aid they are recieving, it would be easy to harness this "workforce, at current rate of reinbursement that they are recieving, and put them to work. I've said this before, and will say it again. Instead of giving away money to people not to work, let's put them to work with the same funds, and get something back in return. I don't know about the rest of the country, but here the roadways are deteriorating. Lets take this work force and assign them to road maintenance. Let's take all those mom's on welfare, and teach them day care skills, so they can work watching their kids and other's kids, while the others can work else where. Let's take the unemployed construction workers, and assign them to projects that need help rebuilding or building new facilites. Nexts lets get our troops out of these foreign countries and use the money we spend there, to help improve education of our own. It's not rocket science to teach a man to work, will provide that person with skills to feed themselves and their family and feel good about it.
Heck Their are millions of jobs that could be funded by what we spend supporting people not to work. Seasonal fire fighters, trail crew for our National Forests, Parks and monuments, and state and county parks which are closing left and right for lack of funds.
How about training some of these folks as teacher assistants and placing them in the classrooms.
How about instead of supplementing farm corperations not to grow food, or grow"junk food comodities, to grow food that could be store long term, or distributed to people on food stamps. Make local community farms, and create jobs for folks who can't travel far to work, and are unemployeed to grow the food they get, vs. get food stamps for junk food.
I think their is a lot of resources and wealth going to waste. We don't need to raise taxes to spend more money to inspire more people not to work. We need to retrain people to feel value in working. Okay off the soap box now!