WIKI
End Poverty in California (EPIC) was a political campaign started in 1934 by socialist writer Upton Sinclair (best known as author of The Jungle). The movement formed the basis for Sinclair’s campaign for Governor of California in 1934. The plan called for a massive public works program, sweeping tax reform, and guaranteed pensions. It gained major popular support, with thousands joining End Poverty Leagues across the state. EPIC never came to fruition due to Sinclair’s defeat in the 1934 election, but is seen as an influence on New Deal programs enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Sinclair laid out his vision for EPIC in his 1933 book I, Governor of California, and How I ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future. Specifically, the plan called for state seizure of idle factories and farm land where the owner had failed to pay property taxes. The government would then hire the unemployed to work on the farms and at the factories. The farms would then operate as self-sufficient, worker-run co-ops. EPIC also called for the implementation of California’s first state income tax. The tax was to be progressive, with the wealthiest being taxed at 30%. The plan would also have increased inheritance taxes and instituted a 4% tax on stock transfers. EPIC also included government-provided pensions for the old, disabled, and widowed. To implement EPIC, Sinclair called for the creation of three new government agencies: the California Authority for Land (CAL), the California Authority for Production (CAP), and the California Authority for Money (CAM). CAL was to implement the plan for seizure and cultivation of unused farm lands. CAP was to do the same for idle factories. CAM meanwhile was to be used to finance CAL and CAP by issuing scrip to workers and issues bonds for the purchase of lands, factories, and machinery.
In late 1934, Harry Hopkins, a senior adviser to Roosevelt who went on to oversee many New Deal programs, proposed an “End Poverty in America” campaign that The New York Times wrote “differs from Sinclair’s plan in detail, but not in principle.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_Poverty_in_California
There are lots of memes (and products with the meme) “1984 is not an instruction manual.”
I’ve always liked those; but what if the meme is wrong and it *is*?
(Carolina) “U.S. policy was to give Stalin, a totalitarian dictator, everything he wanted without asking anything in return. A key architect of that policy, FDR’s most powerful advisor, was Harry Hopkins, a social worker and Socialist Party alum who excelled at giving away other people’s money. For most of his time in Washington, Hopkins held no Cabinet post though he resided at the White House for three years, giving Stalin the inside track.
The authors — journalists and Cold War-era experts Stan Evans and Herb Romerstein — show how Hopkins, Moscow’s “principal agent” during the war, made sure Stalin got U.S. documents about the American nuclear program, and even a shipment of Uranium-235. Hopkins further wanted Stalin to keep all the Polish territory he grabbed under the Nazi-Soviet Pact, when then-allies Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939. Hopkins also blocked aid to Polish anti-Nazi fighters and backed Stalin on every demand. ...” Etc.