Get busy winning
Get busy winning, Digby’s Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan
Or get busy watching freedom die . . .
Blue America‘s Howie Klein (Down With Tyranny) points to an old idea still current and still popular: FDR’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights (1944). Our political bill of rights, FDR saw, was inadequate for assuring “equality in the pursuit of happiness.”
“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
January 20, 1937
As a record number of people die on America’s streets, Abdul Curry fights to stay alive.
Howie excerpts FDR’s speech:
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people— whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth— is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights— among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however— as our industrial economy expanded— these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all— regardless of station, race, or creed.
Howie adds:
Yesterday, DATA For Progress released a poll showing that most Americans are still waiting for our political elites to carry out what FDR asked for around 8 decades ago. Their results show that 69% of likely voters support an Economic Bill of Rights— and not just normal people. Even 51% of Republican voters favor it! That includes 87% of voters who agree that Americans have a right to healthcare (including 82% of Republicans). Next week, Bernie and Pramila are going to roll out a Medicare-for-All proposal. Although Republicans have been brainwashed by Fox to oppose those words, 56% of Americans support it, including a third of Republican voters.
Other findings:
- 74% of voters support a federal jobs guarantee.
- 81% of voters support the right to a preschool education and 72% support the right to a college education.
- 72% support the idea of building enough housing that would ensure all Americans a decent place to live.
- 79% support the right to a basic income (including 71% of Republicans).
- 63% support the right to basic banking services (through the post office)
- 66% support the right to unionize (including even 44% of GOP voters)
Like efforts to stop the daily mass slaughter, these ideas enjoy solid majority support. That 80 years after FDR we still cannot muster the political will to deliver on them Roosevelt condemns from his grave. They won’t be remedied by surrendering our liberties to strongmen or to oligarchs.
“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”
January 9, 1940
“They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers…call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.”
March 15, 1941
Make the bullies back down …
The Second Bill of Rights or Bill of Economic Rights was proposed by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, January 11, 1944. In his address, Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognise and should now implement, a second “bill of rights”. Roosevelt argued that the “political rights” guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness”. His remedy was to declare an “economic bill of rights” to guarantee these specific rights:
Employment (right to work)
An adequate income for food, shelter, and recreation
Farmers’ rights to a fair income
Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
Decent housing
Adequate medical care
Social security
Education
FDR’s 2nd Bill of Rights
yes and yes, but yes, but…
we need security. we do not need “equality.” as long as the Left over reaches (and i realize… you don’t know what i am talking about) the rich will be afraid…or have the excuse… that there is no end to our “demands.”
i am not pollyanna. i know they will fight us in any case. and cheat. but we have a better chance of reaching a compromise we can live with if we understand that stupidity and greed from the left is no prettier than stupidity and greed from the right.
just to try to limit the damage from that comment..i am suggesting that we begin by addressing the real crimes of those with economic power and not just run around “demanding” some sort of vague “equality” and bad solutions to easy to solve real problems., while alienating the people who ought to be on our side.
and more specifically, I am stunned by the Left’s refusal to understand that an extra dollar per week on their Social Security “tax” (savings) is not crippling..but selling Social Security to the Rich by “demanding” they pay “their fair share”.(..which they already do by any sane standard of what “fair” means) will assure that the rich will destroy Social Security at their leisure and the best you can hope for is a few shares in the stock market, which last time i looked were not guaranteed..
Screw the rich. The entire system has been pandering to them and helping build up their wealth at the expense of the other 99% for half a century now. Decades of insane tax cuts are the main reason we can’t have the kind of security this post describes and which other advanced countries have long had. Restoring taxes on the wealthy to something like what they were back when the country was really booming, and the rising tide really did lift all boats, is the only hope for reducing the deficit and achieving anything close to what’s become the normal minimum standard for a civilized nation’s social safety net.
The rich should be damn grateful we haven’t yet reached the tumbrels-and-guillotines stage. And the way things are going I’m not sure how far off that point is, if we can’t defeat their influence and start rebuilding a normal economy and tax structure.
Infidel:
The trump tax cuts were paused under reconciliation. They will revert in 2025 only to pay for the corporate tax cuts which will remain in place, I did not need the extra couple of hundred every 15 days which would have left me paying more taxes, I withheld more.
Restore the taxes for those making >$200,000 annually incrementally. A higher percentage for those making more. Fix the corporate taxes and eliminate deductions. Once again they played games dueing the pandemic the same as 2008.
It’s not just the Trump tax cuts. These tax cuts for the wealthy have been happening repeatedly over the last half-century. Reversing the tax cuts passed under Trump wouldn’t even begin to rectify the problem. We need to reverse the disastrous cascade of successive tax cuts for the rich which has been going on at least since Reagan.
Infidel:
The current issue is caused by these particular cuts. Repubs want us to pay for their program which is not paying off, Will Dems sell us out. Yellen says we will go into recession. Should we call the Repubs bluff? Biden was responsible for these issues too,
I already know the history. I am worried about the deal.
infidel
“screw the rich.” yep. that’s exactly the kind of tightly focussed, thoughtful and doable progressive plan that i was talking about. and it sure won’t make us any more enemies than we need. or convince people we are not good bets to run the country.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14GnT
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom, 2007-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10Wte
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom, 2007-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14GnA
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom, 2017-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=11RG7
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom, 2017-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14Gni
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for China, United States, India, Japan and Germany, 2000-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10WsB
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for China, United States, India, Japan and Germany, 2000-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14Gs4
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for China, United States, India, Japan and Germany, 2007-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14GrN
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for China, United States, India, Japan and Germany, 2007-2021
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however— as our industrial economy expanded— these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
this is what happened. This is what the framers did not and could not have anticipated. Maybe Hamilton and a few others had a vague idea, but the founders could not possibly have reckoned with this in the constitution. The only the way to adequately address these failures in a politically secure way is via a series of currently unreachable amendments.
Short of that, the economic policy focus should be on fortifying social security and expanding Medicare- realistically affordable medicare.
Policy preference polls are routinely contradicted by our federalist electoral mechanics. This is why I don’t think we currently have a reliable constituency for much more than incremental reform. Yes, I find that disappointing, and I would greatly prefer to be wrong.