At the end of Christian Marazzi's short but brilliant book The Violence of Financial Capitalism (the title is a little misleading; Marazzi's thinking has little in common with Naomi Klein's rather limited concept of "disaster capitalism"):

According to Robert Shiller, hiring one million unemployed workers these sectors [education, healthcare, urban infrastructure maintenance, youth employment programs, domestic aid, cultural and artistic projects] would cost $30 billion per year, or 4% of the entire American economic stimulus package, and 0.2% of the national debt.

Why is it nearly impossible to do something that is so damn cheap and would generate jobs and mend much of the economy? Because it is a bottom-up solution and not a top-down one. If there's going to be any kind of socialism in the US of today, it must come from the top, from those who control the banks and financing. And the kind of socialism they can only imagine is rented socialism. Those at the bottom must rent their basic rights—shelter, a decent education, access to transportation. This is the essence of ownership society. If you cant rent these rights, then you are left with a bare existence.