The people of Vicksburg still benefit every day from the federal make-work programs of the 1930s.

If a comprehensive list exists, I’ve never seen it, but I’ve always been told that all the concrete streets with rounded curbs, like the stretch of Halls Ferry extending up the hill from Bowmar to Interstate 20, were a product of one of the Works Progress Administration programs.

Streets of this type dominate in the Vicksburg National Military Park, some never needing resurfacing. The stretch of Confederate Avenue from Wisconsin Avenue to North Frontage Road is another example, including the brick overpass at Halls Ferry.

Not only were streets formed and paved, but all sorts of associated drainage work was done. Pretty important around here with the local soil conditions.

Famed Mississippi author Eudora Welty traveled the state taking pictures in one WPA program. Artists were hired to paint murals in courtrooms. Buildings were constructed at what is now the Army’s Engineering Research and Development Center. And lots more.

Of course, everything I know about the Great Depression is from listening or reading. I wasn’t there, but it sounds like the New Deal was a good deal.

There are, however, vast differences in American life that render talk of new federal jobs programs similar to those 75 years ago questionable.

Primarily, we are no longer a “work or starve” society.

I’m not saying poverty and hunger no longer exist in the United States. They do. But it’s different. Face it, hundreds of people who might be on Medicaid, live in public or subsidized housing and have food benefit cards in Vicksburg also have good cars, the latest cell phones and big-screen TVs. It’s a very different day.

When I read about conditions that existed in the years after the 1929 stock market crash it’s clear that there were few, if any, unemployment checks for those who lost jobs. America had a far more rural existence and vast numbers of people turned to growing their own food, raising chickens and such. President Franklin Roosevelt’s initiatives included the alphabet soup of work programs, but also included innovations such as Social Security, which debuted in 1935 so that senior citizens would have at least enough money to subsist. It was never intended as a retirement program. Before Social Security, turning 65 meant nothing. People worked until they died or retired on their life savings if they had any or moved in with relatives if they didn’t. No Medicaid. No Medicare. No nursing homes. When banks failed, they failed. No bailouts. No federal insurance for deposits.

It’s being said that the Obama administration wants, at least in part, to revive some of the make-work programs as part of a stimulus plan to kindle a better national economy.

That’s all well and good, but there needs to be recognition that we now live in an entitlement society. It’s not a bad thing that people without jobs can get health care and food and housing vouchers, but it does change the notion that people would flock to enroll in Civilian Conservation Corps camps in 2009 as our pred-ecessors did because the absolute necessity does not exist — at least not yet.

It appears that most of the stimulus will be allocated to public works projects to be administered through traditional methods — grants to cities, counties and states for infrastructure work bid out to regular construction companies. People may envision that a new New Deal will bear resemblance to the original New Deal.

That’s not likely.

The Great Depression didn’t just result in streets and drainage structures and courthouses and dams and federal buildings, many of which remain in service today. It changed who we are as a people and especially how we look at the role of government in our lives.

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Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail cmitchell@vicksburgpost.com.