A Pocketbook Political Primer For Children.
(Those not interested in a nod to history can jump down to "the numbers" below.)
For seemingly like forever, Republicans have been screaming that The New Deal didn't work. Odd that FDR was rewarded for this failure by being re-elected three times. But how many today have even a superficial understanding of the three major components of The New Deal and the principal champions of those components?
Financial Services – banking, investing, insurance:
Fedinand Percora, Carter Glass, Henry B. Steagall
The New Deal Legislation on financial services ended the bad old days of runs on bad banks and stock market collapses due to Wall Street double-dealing and theft. It worked extremely well until Democrats and Republicans changed the rules. First for S&Ls (a total failure) and later for everything else. Imagine if Republicans had had there way and eliminated depository insurance!
Government Fiscal Policy:
John Maynard Keynes "big book" - General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in 1936, three years after the beginning of The New Deal. He and his earlier works weren't unknown among leaders in the capitals of western countries grappling with the Great Depression, but they tip-toed rather than rushed headlong into Keynesian economics. As usual, these ideas were way too new and revolutionary for Republicans.
If it took World War II to pull this country out of the Great Depression, it's because Republicans refused to loosen the federal purse-strings before then.
Government Social Economic Policy:
Frances Perkins. The New Deal fell short of everything Ms. Perkins advocated for (most notably universal health care), but she changed the American way of life. Highlights:
Social Security
Unemployment benefits
Minimum wage
Forty hour workweek
Workplace safety
Child labor exploitation
Welfare
Republicans hated all of that back then and haven't changed. None of those initiatives came easy or quickly.
The federal minimum wage, over-time rules and protection of children only came into being with The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Implementation of the minimum wage was slow and has never been complete. The "richest country in the world" has never seen fit to insure that the least among receive a fair or living wage for their labors. It took thirty years to get the minimum wage to slightly above the federal poverty level for a family of three.* Nor can we be bothered to index it for inflation. The least among us have to depend on the willy-nilly actions of rich, old, mostly-white, people in Washington.
----The Numbers--
The US federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 - $9.86 in 2009 dollars --$1.60 in 1968. Why was that considered "too much" instead of "too little?" What if we'd simply agreed that it was "about right?" (Those that want to argue the pros or cons of the minimum wage -- please find another diary or website for it.)
Forty-two years (1968-2009), full-time (40 hours/week; 52 weeks/year) at a constant dollar minimum wage of $1.60 in 1968 totals $861,370. In the United Skinflints of America, the actual total gross wages for that forty-two years of hard work was $621,795. A total 28% income reduction for minimum wage workers from that of 1968.
The good, bad and ugly years (annual average) compared with the 1968 base year of $20,509.
1969-1976: $17,774 – low point $16,073 (1973)
1977-1980: $17,420 - low point $16,785 (1980)
1981-1988: $14,339 - low point $12,646 (1988)
1989-1992: $13,120 – low point $12,064 (1989)
1993-2000: $13,426 – low point $12,438 (1995)
2001-2008: $12,467 – low point $11,398 (2006)
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This is the American Dream? Forty years of minimum wage cuts? (Almost 50% less in 2006 than 1968). Forty years of politicians screaming about tax cuts and rarely mentioning that working stiffs were being stiffed on their income. Stiffed to make others richer and increase the income and wealth inequality in the US. When did Americans lose the ability to see that 80% of $10 is MORE than 100% of $6?
*Here's the 2009 poverty chart.