The idea of a significant public works project in the United States appeals to me, though it certainly appears unacceptable in this age of wildly inaccurate socialism-bashing. But let’s look to history for an example. How many people are fully aware of the domestic crisis that held sway in March 1933, when Roosevelt took office?
Unemployment was far higher than 25% nationally. The dust bowl had transformed much of the nation’s midsection into a vast wasteland. True starvation was hardly unknown in the USA. Herbert Hoover had done too little too late to alleviate a desperate situation; when he appeared around the country crowds would shout “Hang him!” Armed soldiers ringed Capitol Hill. Private enterprise had already had two or three years to prove either able or willing to heal the nation’s festering economic wounds; it had failed spectacularly.
What did the Roosevelt administration do? From “Roosevelt and Hopkins; an Intimate History,” by Robert E. Sherwood: “…They drew the plans for the Civil Works Administration which put the four million people to work in the first 30 days of its existence and, in less than four months, inaugurated 180,000 work projects and spent over $933 millions.” That was a vast sum in 1933 dollars! They were quite willing to improvise; when one program didn’t achieve sufficient results, they came up with another. As Federal Emergency Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins dispersed $5,000,000 to the desperate - during his first two hours in office! Hopkins, facing the wrath of Capital and its reactionary mouthpieces like the Chicago Tribune, figured “I’m not going to last six months here, so I’ll do as I please.”
Millions received a paycheck for real work; for many the it was the first cash in months or years. Thousands of schools (and we are now cutting education funding? MADNESS!!!) and a half million miles of highways were built or repaired. Artists and writers also were employed by the government. When he was criticized for this, Hopkins said: “They have to eat like everyone else.”
Some folks say that spending their way out of the Depression in Keynesian fashion would have worked even better if the “stimulus” hadn’t been cut significantly later in the Roosevelt years. Some opponents of this idea are quick to claim that only the accelerated military spending beginning in the 1939-1940 period - culminating in America becoming the wartime “Arsenal of Democracy” - finally dug America out of the hole. I think there may be some truth in both these claims.
But, bottom line: the New Deal indisputably put hungry and homeless people to work and even saved lives. It even, ironically, saved Capitalism! It is now time to replace the dangerously decaying infrastructure that dates from the thirties and even earlier. A great opportunity that must be properly understood as such. Unfortunately, Obama’s pathetic half-measures, the sadly minimal public works projects of 2009 and 2010, don’t fit the bill.
In the interest of full disclosure: Dan Goldstein is a Socialist!
P.S: N
ow I'm thinking (thanks to someone who pointed this out on another person's Facebook page) that in seeking to draw a moral distinction between two different recipients of public spending, I failed to recognize the actual affinity of military and "peaceful" spending under Keynesianism. My half hour of fact-checking before posting what I wrote above didn't prevent me from stating a likely error concerning ideology. By some definitions, Ronald Reagan was a Keynesian! Hmmm... but does cutting taxes - of the richest Americans in particular - while you dramatically increase spending - like Reagan and W. Bush - strictly adhere to the doctrine of John Maynard Keynes? Economics is admittedly not my forte'...
Don't worry folks, I know how to do a google:)
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