Take Hold of Our History by Harvey J. Kaye;

Take Hold of Our History by Harvey J. Kaye;

Author:Harvey J. Kaye;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Hunt (NBN)
Published: 2019-09-16T16:00:00+00:00


11

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” Demands $15 an Hour

Published at Moyers and Company, April 27, 2015

Knowing that “necessitous men are not free men,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a New Deal in 1933 that rallied Americans to not only fight the Great Depression, but also to combat poverty, reduce inequality, and enhance American democratic life.

Together, President and People subjected the banks and national commerce to government supervision, provided jobs for the jobless, and refurbished the nation’s infrastructure and environment.

Moreover, right from the start, FDR and his New Dealers in the Cabinet and Congress set out to establish a minimum wage and empower workers to organize unions.

When the majority of Americans called for further action, FDR and his allies launched a Second New Deal in 1935 that increased corporate regulation and taxes, expanded public works and employment, created a social security system, and bolstered workers’ capacities to secure industrial democracy in their workplaces. All of which enabled Americans to not only confront the Depression, but also go on to win the Second World War and turn the United States into the strongest and most prosperous nation in history.

How many times must we say it? We need to do what FDR and our parents and grandparents did. We need to launch a new New Deal. We need to regulate and tax capital, refurbish the national infrastructure and environment, and empower workers to cultivate economic democracy and reduce inequality. But to do all of that we need to expand our already-resurgent progressive populist movement in favor of a new politics in 2016.

For starters, we need to press President Obama and Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. At the least we must push the President and aspiring Democratic candidates to “take a note” from FDR and set a progressive-populist political agenda for the upcoming campaigns.

Declaring that “economic laws are not made by nature [but] by human beings,” Roosevelt told his fellow citizens in the presidential campaign of 1932 that it was time for a new “economic declaration of rights” to renew the nation’s democratic promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – the promise proclaimed by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

As FDR put it: “Every man has a right to life; and this means he also has a right to make a comfortable living… Our government…owes to everyone an avenue to possess himself of a portion of [America’s] plenty sufficient for his needs through his work.” And with good reason, Americans would elect him to the presidency four times.

Defeating Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt and his New Dealers quickly secured from Congress an extraordinary series of relief, recovery, and reconstruction initiatives. They made many a terrible and tragic mistake, but they continually empowered working people. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) set up Labor and Consumer Advisory Boards, licensed workers to organize unions, and established the first national minimum wage. But as Roosevelt saw it, a minimum wage was not enough.



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