Posted on 09/22/2015 10:30:42 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
A high school teacher who has worked in Oregon and Manhattan is determined to pass on his history of the Great Depression.
“By the end of Roosevelt’s first two terms in office, nonagricultural private-sector workers had the right to organize unions and the National Labor Relations Board was created to enforce that right,” Adam Sanchez writes in the Fall 2015 issue of Rethinking Schools. “The unemployed had access to a new, permanent system of unemployment insurance, and the elderly could rely on social security.”
“Millions of people were put back to work through federal jobs programs.” Sanchez, who teaches at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, previously taught at Madison High School in Portland, Oregon.
His summation is accurate, as far as it goes, but:
~FDR also signed the Hobbs Act in his third term, which left a loophole open that eventually exempted labor unions from federal penalties for violent acts, as determined by Richard Nixon’s Supreme Court;
~Until recently, unemployment compensation, according to a half century’s worth of studies by the federal agency that administers it—the U. S. Department of Labor—showed that the jobless who received it only found work when it ended after 26 weeks while the out-of-work who weren’t compensated landed new jobs in about a month.
~Social Security has been in a state of crisis for most of its existence, requiring countless tax increases to maintain it, at least 20 in my 56 years on the planet; and
~The unemployment rate at the end of FDR’s second term was about 15 percent.
Amity Schlaes wrote a rather detailed examination of the failures of the New Deal.
History bookmark.
I had a neighbor who was a Teamster. He seemed thoroughly familiar with the Hobbs Act loophole. He made no bones about engaging in violent acts to advance the cause, had been doing so since 1960, and appeared to believe he did so with total impunity.
The whole new deal was a failure.
W2 ended the depression caused by the New Deal.
Most Americans dont know that the Great Depression was only great in the US, for the rest of the world it was just another recession. The New Deal programs turned a normal recession into the depression.
Ironically, the Teamsters were about the only union that ever got called on that.
a really good read it is too
hmmm, let me see, this article references some of the following ten planks that I have read about somewhere else...
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax...
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries...
10. Free education for all children in government schools...
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