A profound thanks to those who invoke FDR and the New Dealers

[JDPriestly]

6. K&R. Obama promised hope. FDR delivered hope.

We all need to ask ourselves and our friends: how much did we earn before the 2008 crash? How much are we earning now?

Have your wages kept pace with the increases in food costs, utility charges, other expenses?

That's our personal bottom line. How do the increases in our outlays compare with the increases or decreases in our incomes.

Some are doing OK. But many are not.

The increased number of jobs is great. But what are they jobs? Are they permanent, full-time jobs or temporary, maybe even seasonal, part-time jobs? Are they service jobs? Or are they industrial jobs? What percentage of them is in the financial services sector? What percentage is minimum wage?

We need to be tough critics of what goes on in our economy.

At the apex of union density in the 1940s, only about 9.8% of public employees were represented by unions, while 33.9% of private, non-agricultural workers had such representation. In this decade, those proportions have essentially reversed, with 36% of public workers being represented by unions while private sector union density had plummeted to around 7%. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent survey indicates that union membership in the US has risen to 12.4% of all workers, from 12.1% in 2007. For a short period, private sector union membership rebounded, increasing from 7.5% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2008.[37] However, that trend has since reversed. In 2013 there were 14.5 million members in the U.S., compared with 17.7 million in 1983. In 2013, the percentage of workers belonging to a union was 11.3%, compared to 20.1% in 1983. The rate for the private sector was 6.7%, and for the public sector 35.3%.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

A good collection of Franklin D. Roosevelt's speeches on many topics is entitled Looking Forward. I have a paperback copy but the original was first published in 1933.

On page 186, FDR described the situation of the country that faced him as president:

"It is fist necessary to look the facts squarely in the face. They are as follows. Two-thirds of American industry is concentrated in a few hundred corporations, and actually manage by not more than five thousand men. More than half of the savings of the country are invested in corporation stocks and bonds, which have been made the sport of the American stock markets. Fewer than three dozen private banking houses, and stock-selling adjuncts in the commercial banks, have dictated the flow of capital within the country and outside it. Economic power is concentrated in a few hands. A great part of our working population has not chance of earning a living except by the grace of this concentrated economic machinery. Millions of Americans are out of work, throwing upon the already overburdened government the necessity of relief. The tariff has cut off any chance of a foreign market for our products -- the effect of which has been the cutting of the earnings of the farmer to the extent of threatening him generally with foreclosure and want."

FDR put helping the American people first. We will forever be grateful to him.

But if you read the paragraph I quoted, the conditions may sound awfully familiar. Of course, today we have trade agreements. But they have not achieved the goals that Roosevelt set.

FDR stated about trade agreements (which he favored strongly):

"A tariff is a tax on certain goods passing from the producer to the consumer. It is laid on these goods rather than on other similar ones because they originate abroad. This is obviously protection for the producers of competing of goods at home. Peasants who live at lower levels than our farmers, workers who are sweated to reduce costs, ought not to determine the price of American goods. There are standards which we desire to set for ourselves. Tariffs should be large enough to maintain living standards which we set for ourselves. But if they are higher they become a particularly vicious kind of direct tax which is laid doubly on the consumer. Not only are the prices of foreign goods raised, but those of domestic good also.

pages 145-146, Looking Forward.