The Nation: The Only Fitting Tribute (to the New Deal)

[marmar]

article | posted March 20, 2008 (April 7, 2008 issue)
The Only Fitting Tribute
Frances Moore Lappé



I feel a bit silly. For decades I called myself a child of the '60s, only to realize on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal that I'm really its child. Coming to maturity as its beneficiary, I had a debt-free college education and, thanks to New Deal advances that doubled the real family income of the poor and middle class, my husband and I were able to live for a time on his salary alone.

It was thus, very practically, the New Deal that freed me to explore the "big questions." Food, the basis of life, seemed like a smart place to start, so I asked, Why hunger in a world of plenty?

Soon it began to dawn on me: as long as food is merely a commodity in societies that don't protect people's right to participate in the market, and as long as farming is left vulnerable to consolidated power off the farm, many will go hungry, farmers among them--no matter how big the harvests.

I might have gotten there quicker if I'd studied Roosevelt's insight that, to serve life, markets need help from accountable, democratic government. Against those who saw "economic laws" as "sacred," he argued that "economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." So in 1944 (my birth year), Roosevelt called on Americans to implement what was already "accepted"--"a second Bill of Rights" centered on economic opportunity and security. It would, in effect, put values boundaries around the market. His goal wasn't a legal document, observes University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, but the generation of a "set of public commitments by and for the citizenry, very much like the Declaration of Independence."

The first two economic rights assured a "useful" job that paid enough to provide "adequate food and clothing." The third guaranteed farmers a high enough return for their crops to provide their families with a "decent living." To begin, he asked Congress to pass a "cost of food law," putting a price floor under farmers and a price ceiling on the cost of food necessities for all. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/lappe

[Selatius]

1. We could use another left winger like FDR. We're on a fast-track to ruin. n/t

[SharonAnn]

2. We need a "New" New Deal. There's plenty of work to be done, so we can create jobs

to do some of this work.

Just little things like requiring the Federal Contractors working in Katrina hit areas to hire local labor at the prevailing wage rates would do a world of good there. Then, to fix up the repairable low-income housing there with some of this labor would be a tremendous cost savings to the taxpayer and a benefit to the residents. But instead, Bush "waived" the David-Bacon rule so that Federal Contractors could bring in (sometimes illegal) workers and pay them less than the minimum wage. The displaced are without jobs and without homes and the taxpayer is paying the beill for their housing, food, etc. The only happy people in this entire scenario are those who have connections to get the Federal Contracts that are paid by the US Taxpayer. Everyone else (including the Taxpayer) is suffering.

And there's a huge backlog of work at the National Parks, on highways and bridges, etc., etc.

[marmar]

3. Very true. The degree to which this country's infrastructure has been allowed to rot....

.... is shameful.