New Deal - class 2-16-2005

2-16-2005 rheoric of taxes - Many voters don’t make voting decisions rationally or morally - by asking “which tax system would Jesus or Mohammed like” or “which tax system will make a better, more productive society” – they viscerally respond to images – especially fear or greed. “Death” “it’s your money”

Jesus / Mohammed thought if the rich didn’t give some of their wealth to the poor they’d go to hell. SDNorquist believe taking some of the wealth of the rich is thinking like the Holocaust.

During the New Deal there was an “estate tax” – which made you think of the fat guy in the top hat on the monopoly game-board. income was divided into “earned” ” and “unearned”. Jesus “reap what you sew” – labor deserves reward. Making money with money – Usury – means hell. “earned” and “unearned” told you that you should put high rates on “unearned” income and let the working man keep what he earned - to feed and educate his kids so they have an easier life. My dad did, his government cooperated and my generation has had a much easier life.

Norquist and the SDRepublicans have learned to use precisely the same rhetoric over and over again. The “estate” tax on inheritances over $1.5 million is “death” tax. They associate it with Nazis taking gold out of teeth and explicitly the Holocaust. Jesus and Mohammed are Nazi-like to Norquist - government takes taxes “by force” like “Jack booted thugs”

WORK - Ford and Taylor - scientific production and management – industrial scale labor loses skills which give them value and control

Long term trends pre-ford car 1000 man hours – many skilled

Ford cut to 97 man hours most unskilled harshly regimented

Toyota now 10 man hours – but each employee skilled – maintain robots

MUCH Less labor demand industries – manufacturing workers from over 40% to 17%

Consumers do well – cheap car - but less $ to buy –

Ford pays $5 day so his workers can buy his cars – paternalistic – violent anti-union

Vastly increased business profits and minimal $ to labor overall

Masses turn to Sports, movies, radio – consumer not producer

worker little pride in job - machines / scale /discipline

Depression – great cynicism bankers, stock market – many fraud investigations

CULTURAL - Bank robbers celebrity-heroes – get back at the rich bankers

Woody Guthrie - Movies celebrate diversity – GI’s always multi-ethnic –

HEROIC POOR Tom Joad – Henry Fonda in Grapes of wrath

Sense of common economic grievance across ethnic groups –

Cessation of mass immigration in 1920’s – most assimilated – speak English

Radio and other common culture + Depression wipes out ethnic banks and charities

After Crash Hoover try trickle down – we have the most limited welfare system in western world

Melon’s “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, …purge the rottenness out of the system” is close to IMF response to Korean / Asian debt crisis 1997 – connection SD and racism? Don’t do that to European countries

FDR – blamed Repubs for isolationism undermining possibility prosperity and peace

hi tarrifs, making Europe pay debts – league enthusiast – intervene Hitler?

Can say in NY - politically unpopular in the less cosmopolitain country at large –

tries to lead - looks around - no-one is following

New Deal State servant of masses - protector of poor and old – referee market excesses

Banking reform – Oversight and insurance - not nationalize – keep markets

Securities&ExchangeCommission – license – monitor – responsibility transparent claims

Bush43 says SEC is biggest “Problem” – foreign policy prescriptions include

“low marginal tax rates and permissive regulatory environment’

CivilianConservationCorps – trails, roads, trees, water, telephone wire, infrastructure

Relief for desperate poor and beef up demand - trails in Zion

TennValleyAuth – electricity – flood control – erosion educ – lotsa kids hillside corn

Private power companies scream – dereg Calif lately – natural monopoly - yardstick

NRA – try to make businesses and labor obey code – cooperate – large firms dominate

Courts shoot down - probably a bad idea

AgricAdjustmentAct – limit production – processors scream – sharecroppers screwed

Large farms benefit most

Many unsatisfied on left - Huey Long & Deuteronomy (Ala gov tax reform WWJD)

Upton Sinclair – put unemployed into idle factories –

TR era - “Jungle” – evil capitalist meat packers - “aimed at heart hit in stomach”

1934 big win congress

Second New Deal – away from central planning – protect empower labor

NatlLaborRelationsAct – elections to represent – board to mediate

much unionizing - - limits – WWII more leverage with mobilization

SocSecurity – conservatives “kill private property – destroy initiative – spineless loafers”

Unemployment insurance – keep family going – prevent cascading reduced demand

Progressive taxation – income (63% to 79% very high incomes) – corporate – dividends

Inheritance “unearned income” vs “death” – close loopholes by threatening publicity on actual taxes paid

Southern Congressmen – keep “entitlements” away from domestic and agric workers

Women and Blacks – limits of New Deal coalition – FDR less “race” enthusiast than Eleanor

1936 big win – turnout 45% à 57% “forces of selfishness have met their match”

1938 elections –overreach – campaign agst very conservative Southerners

those trying to run on FDR coattails fail – oops – talk of realignment –

only happens after 1965

court packing – balance old social Darwinists - oops – but court is more deferential

Indians – repeal Dawes Act – Indians can have communal property – multicultural –

no “Private Property” fetish as earlier

affordable housing – esp in urban areas where jobs for poor are – just killed by Bush43

FairLabor Standards – child labor, minimum wage

Poll tax repeal and anti-lynching law die in congress

Roosevelt not a Keynsian yet – stops pump-priming while demand is still weak

– cuts relief – Raises interest rates à renewed recession

New Deal – saves capitalism by reform – preclude more radical statist moves

Huey Long and Deuteronomy – “Share our wealth” confiscatory

Hoover’s Freedom – “unfettered economic opportunity for enterprising individual”

FDR’s – security and opportunity for average man “democracy of opportunity”

Entrenched economic inequality enemy of acceptable standard of living for masses

“shared abundance” Radio – good personality more important than logic