It seems a bit odd to compare this to the CCC, but then not actually compare the numbers involved. The CCC had 250,000 workers within months of FDR creating it, and over 500,000 by 1935. It was at...
It seems a bit odd to compare this to the CCC, but then not actually compare the numbers involved. The CCC had 250,000 workers within months of FDR creating it, and over 500,000 by 1935. It was at least 10 times larger than this is envisioned to be, and closer to 30 times larger in terms of percentage of the country's population. The programs, of course, were organized around a very different economic situation. As the article notes, it isn't clear where funding for this program will come from, as congressional funding was voted down, and it's not clear how attractive this will be with at least nominally low unemployment, though it is possible that the work will be more enticing. It's not clear that directly copying FDR's ideas in a completely different situation makes sense.
This isn't necessarily a bad program. But describing it as copying the CCC and the New Deal does a disservice to FDR. The CCC was an enormous, ambitious program that left a lasting, pervasive mark on the American landscape, while this seems confusingly small. While the quotes largely seem to be about calls to create this, unless the people calling for it were envisioning something very different than what is being advertised now, describing this as an "unprecedented scale" is utterly ridiculous: FDR ran a larger corps-style public works program than this when he was the governor of New York.
And of course, the CCC was one of the smaller of the public works programs FDR created that year: FERA, and the CWA it created, employed millions of workers through contractors to do public works in 1933. The WPA would later peak at 3.3 million workers in 1938. The "ACC" is completely insignificant in scale in comparison to New Deal policies. The WPA employed almost as many librarians as the entire ACC hopes to employ.
As a comment, too, on the astonishing speed and forcefulness of FDR's politics: FDR's inauguration, the last before the 20th Amendment took effect, was March 4th, 1933. He proposed the CCC to Congress March 21st, and introduced legislation for it the same day, which passed on March 31st. He then established the CCC by executive order on April 5th. The first camp opened April 17th, and by July 1st, less than four months from his inauguration, there were a quarter million workers at around 1,500 camps. And this is one of the less notable things he did during those first hundred days.
FDR came to power in dire circumstances. The economy had collapsed. The overall unemployment rate was 25%, in an era where many of the social safety nets that later developed simply didn't exist,...
Exemplary
FDR came to power in dire circumstances. The economy had collapsed. The overall unemployment rate was 25%, in an era where many of the social safety nets that later developed simply didn't exist, and when the economic collapse had consumed many people's savings. Banks were in dire risk of bank runs—the FDIC didn't exist—to the point of staying closed to keep account holders from withdrawing more funds. While it had an understandable cause, and was a peaceful protest, the Bonus Army, from a national stability perspective, was terrifying and makes January 6th look ridiculous. January 6th had a few thousand internet warriors flailing around without a plan. The Bonus Army had 17,000 WWI veterans and 26,000 family members and supporters, with ex-military leadership and organization, occupying the capital and refusing to leave. Witnesses recalled that inexperienced police found themselves facing down ranks of men who had lived through German machine guns and artillery, and had nothing left to lose. The response made the US seem even more in crisis, and turned the public even further against the government: there were US Army tanks, cavalry charges, and infantry with bayonets, under direct personal command of a US Army general (MacArthur) attacking American veterans in the middle of the nation's capital and systematically setting a vast encampment ablaze. The government's popularity and credibility was trashed. (My history professor partner often points out that, as much as they love FDR, Hoover was not necessarily a bad leader, he was just a very talented progressive technocrat who was completely the wrong leader for the time. Had he not been elected President, he might have been remembered very differently, for example, amongst other things, as a guy who saved starving babies and millions of Eastern Europeans.)
FDR won a landslide, and his party won both houses. Wikipedia relates someone writing to Hoover that he should vote for FDR so that "it would be unanimous". The US was desperate for bold action. Hearst funded a film essentially suggesting FDR should make himself a dictator.
FDR was then both very prepared, and had the boldness, vision, and political acumen and aggression to move very quickly and decisively. As governor of New York, he had already run smaller versions of many of the programs that began the New Deal. He proposed to set out on a bold plan, and in his inaugural speech ended by suggesting that if Congress wouldn't let him, he'd do it anyway by seeing the crisis as a war; he'd go on to repeatedly clash with the Supreme Court, aggressively, usually doing something enormous, having it eventually found unconstitutional, and then finding some other way to do it (while actually trying to pack the court). He excelled at relating to the public and explaining matters to them directly, and used those talents extensively, particularly with his fireside chats. He was quite willing to make popular moves to increase support, like ending Prohibition, and to make cynical political calculations, like sacrificing the rights of Black Americans within New Deal programs to gain the support of Southern Democrats for them, and then gaining Black support through other moves.
FDR came to power during the Great Depression and fought WWII. Americans, indeed most countries, wanted to do anything to fix the Great Depression. I mean, many think that the political climate...
FDR came to power during the Great Depression and fought WWII. Americans, indeed most countries, wanted to do anything to fix the Great Depression. I mean, many think that the political climate which accepted someone like Hitler in Germany only existed because of Germany's desperation during the Great Depression but they also had to deal with the aftermath of WWI and the Treaty of Versailles.
Same. If he weren't on the verge of turning to dust, I would be super excited for him to run for a second term. He's been doing some great things, but he needs to go further. To hell with decorum...
Same. If he weren't on the verge of turning to dust, I would be super excited for him to run for a second term.
He's been doing some great things, but he needs to go further. To hell with decorum and precendent.
I think he came out the gate knowing he had to go big early. Not only to restore confidence in the republic after an attempted coup, but also after his experiences in Obama's White House seeing...
I think he came out the gate knowing he had to go big early. Not only to restore confidence in the republic after an attempted coup, but also after his experiences in Obama's White House seeing how that cooperative, deliberative approach just led to a bunch of unproductive fucking around that got everything watered down.
Thank you for that article. Good news for those of us who want to see regulation of finance and Wall Street.
Thank you for that article. Good news for those of us who want to see regulation of finance and Wall Street.
While Biden isn’t calling for a major crackdown on Wall Street, regulators who have close connections to Warren and other progressives will be able to rewrite rules for finance and pursue tougher enforcement actions. The dynamic could manifest the next time another financial firm stumbles after taking big risks or hurting customers.
“There isn’t going to be any time wasted trying to get up to speed when faced with the next incident,” said Compass Point director of policy research Isaac Boltansky, who served on the bank bailout oversight panel that Warren chaired after the 2008 financial crisis. “We’re talking about people who have been steeped in policy nuance for years, have a fervent belief in the role of government and policing bad actors, and who know what policy levers to pull in order to accomplish that goal.”
It’s actually shocking that this hasn’t been the standard for public servants all along.
“We’re talking about people who have been steeped in policy nuance for years, have a fervent belief in the role of government and policing bad actors, and who know what policy levers to pull in order to accomplish that goal.”
It’s actually shocking that this hasn’t been the standard for public servants all along.
It's the belief in the role of government that is the issue. This could be a long conversations but the short of it is that conservative propagandists have been on a long campaign to convince...
It's the belief in the role of government that is the issue.
This could be a long conversations but the short of it is that conservative propagandists have been on a long campaign to convince people that the private sector is better at not wasting money and delivering effective results. Many believe that all government programs are doomed to fail.
Grover Norquist and Ronald Reagan popularized this movement along with Margaret Thatcher. I also associate it with the Chicago school of economics, Milton Friedman and author Ayn Rand.
Absolutely, I'm hoping that he will get a second term at this point since he's already been pretty good at getting things done. And been good at not being in the news every damn day. And who...
Absolutely, I'm hoping that he will get a second term at this point since he's already been pretty good at getting things done. And been good at not being in the news every damn day. And who knows, maybe by the end of his second term, Trump might be dead, so we won't have to hear about him ever again.
It seems a bit odd to compare this to the CCC, but then not actually compare the numbers involved. The CCC had 250,000 workers within months of FDR creating it, and over 500,000 by 1935. It was at least 10 times larger than this is envisioned to be, and closer to 30 times larger in terms of percentage of the country's population. The programs, of course, were organized around a very different economic situation. As the article notes, it isn't clear where funding for this program will come from, as congressional funding was voted down, and it's not clear how attractive this will be with at least nominally low unemployment, though it is possible that the work will be more enticing. It's not clear that directly copying FDR's ideas in a completely different situation makes sense.
This isn't necessarily a bad program. But describing it as copying the CCC and the New Deal does a disservice to FDR. The CCC was an enormous, ambitious program that left a lasting, pervasive mark on the American landscape, while this seems confusingly small. While the quotes largely seem to be about calls to create this, unless the people calling for it were envisioning something very different than what is being advertised now, describing this as an "unprecedented scale" is utterly ridiculous: FDR ran a larger corps-style public works program than this when he was the governor of New York.
And of course, the CCC was one of the smaller of the public works programs FDR created that year: FERA, and the CWA it created, employed millions of workers through contractors to do public works in 1933. The WPA would later peak at 3.3 million workers in 1938. The "ACC" is completely insignificant in scale in comparison to New Deal policies. The WPA employed almost as many librarians as the entire ACC hopes to employ.
As a comment, too, on the astonishing speed and forcefulness of FDR's politics: FDR's inauguration, the last before the 20th Amendment took effect, was March 4th, 1933. He proposed the CCC to Congress March 21st, and introduced legislation for it the same day, which passed on March 31st. He then established the CCC by executive order on April 5th. The first camp opened April 17th, and by July 1st, less than four months from his inauguration, there were a quarter million workers at around 1,500 camps. And this is one of the less notable things he did during those first hundred days.
Man, how the hell did FDR do any of this? How did he have so much political capital to spend?
FDR came to power in dire circumstances. The economy had collapsed. The overall unemployment rate was 25%, in an era where many of the social safety nets that later developed simply didn't exist, and when the economic collapse had consumed many people's savings. Banks were in dire risk of bank runs—the FDIC didn't exist—to the point of staying closed to keep account holders from withdrawing more funds. While it had an understandable cause, and was a peaceful protest, the Bonus Army, from a national stability perspective, was terrifying and makes January 6th look ridiculous. January 6th had a few thousand internet warriors flailing around without a plan. The Bonus Army had 17,000 WWI veterans and 26,000 family members and supporters, with ex-military leadership and organization, occupying the capital and refusing to leave. Witnesses recalled that inexperienced police found themselves facing down ranks of men who had lived through German machine guns and artillery, and had nothing left to lose. The response made the US seem even more in crisis, and turned the public even further against the government: there were US Army tanks, cavalry charges, and infantry with bayonets, under direct personal command of a US Army general (MacArthur) attacking American veterans in the middle of the nation's capital and systematically setting a vast encampment ablaze. The government's popularity and credibility was trashed. (My history professor partner often points out that, as much as they love FDR, Hoover was not necessarily a bad leader, he was just a very talented progressive technocrat who was completely the wrong leader for the time. Had he not been elected President, he might have been remembered very differently, for example, amongst other things, as a guy who saved starving babies and millions of Eastern Europeans.)
FDR won a landslide, and his party won both houses. Wikipedia relates someone writing to Hoover that he should vote for FDR so that "it would be unanimous". The US was desperate for bold action. Hearst funded a film essentially suggesting FDR should make himself a dictator.
FDR was then both very prepared, and had the boldness, vision, and political acumen and aggression to move very quickly and decisively. As governor of New York, he had already run smaller versions of many of the programs that began the New Deal. He proposed to set out on a bold plan, and in his inaugural speech ended by suggesting that if Congress wouldn't let him, he'd do it anyway by seeing the crisis as a war; he'd go on to repeatedly clash with the Supreme Court, aggressively, usually doing something enormous, having it eventually found unconstitutional, and then finding some other way to do it (while actually trying to pack the court). He excelled at relating to the public and explaining matters to them directly, and used those talents extensively, particularly with his fireside chats. He was quite willing to make popular moves to increase support, like ending Prohibition, and to make cynical political calculations, like sacrificing the rights of Black Americans within New Deal programs to gain the support of Southern Democrats for them, and then gaining Black support through other moves.
FDR came to power during the Great Depression and fought WWII. Americans, indeed most countries, wanted to do anything to fix the Great Depression. I mean, many think that the political climate which accepted someone like Hitler in Germany only existed because of Germany's desperation during the Great Depression but they also had to deal with the aftermath of WWI and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not gonna lie, I'm starting to like this guy
I wish to God he were ten years younger. I have been very impressed with his policies and with his ability to get things done that I approve of.
Same. If he weren't on the verge of turning to dust, I would be super excited for him to run for a second term.
He's been doing some great things, but he needs to go further. To hell with decorum and precendent.
I suspect if he gets a second term it'll be gloves off. Presidents tend to be bolder when they know they won't have to run for re-election.
I think he came out the gate knowing he had to go big early. Not only to restore confidence in the republic after an attempted coup, but also after his experiences in Obama's White House seeing how that cooperative, deliberative approach just led to a bunch of unproductive fucking around that got everything watered down.
Also, Elizabeth Warren basically got to make a lot of the key personnel appointments because her whole Presidential campaign was centered on getting the right people in the bureaucracy. She was thinking about staffing when nobody else was and had a plan ready to go.
Thank you for that article. Good news for those of us who want to see regulation of finance and Wall Street.
It’s actually shocking that this hasn’t been the standard for public servants all along.
It's the belief in the role of government that is the issue.
This could be a long conversations but the short of it is that conservative propagandists have been on a long campaign to convince people that the private sector is better at not wasting money and delivering effective results. Many believe that all government programs are doomed to fail.
Grover Norquist and Ronald Reagan popularized this movement along with Margaret Thatcher. I also associate it with the Chicago school of economics, Milton Friedman and author Ayn Rand.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-drowning-government-in-the-bathtub-111333
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast#:~:text=Lobbyist%20Grover%20Norquist%20is%20a,drown%20it%20in%20the%20bathtub.%22
Absolutely, I'm hoping that he will get a second term at this point since he's already been pretty good at getting things done. And been good at not being in the news every damn day. And who knows, maybe by the end of his second term, Trump might be dead, so we won't have to hear about him ever again.
I would appreciate learning that he was actually a lich or an elf, but no such luck.