The Economic Case for Kennedy's Election

...The dearth of a systematic economic approach in the United States in the 1930's was indeed a liability which left us with eight million unemployed even in 1939...

...Senator Kennedy is daily making available to the electorate a clear picture of his general thinking, his native impulses, his discernment of the needs of the nation and the world, and his concept of the Presidency...

...It thus neglects the fact that the production which results from investment must be sustained by consumption...

...And under the aegis of a national economic policy which measures our capabilities to perform the essentials by the amount of public revenues actually collected in a stunted economy, rather than by the challenge which unused productive resources offer to translate potential wealth into real wealth, the shortage of Federal revenues has been translated into the almost universally accepted principle that we "cannot afford" what we actually cannot afford to do without...

...The one-sided crusade of the propagandists in high public office against labor in general and unions in particular and the incessant clamor that rising wage trends have been responsible for inflation have encouraged practices in the "administered" areas of the private economy which have distorted price-wage-profit relationships in a regressive direction and militated against economic growth...

...Liberal economists, and Democrats generally, advocate "the economics of abundance...

...A continuation of domestic mistakes would hurt us...

...And while the New Deal did not succeed fully, prior to World War II, in lifting the economy all the way out of the pit into which it had previously been plunged, the New Deal did accomplish a series of permanent economic reforms which have immeasurably strengthened our economic life in all the years since...

...It has encouraged a corporative American agriculture, even while the farm population as a whole has suffered a loss of income as large as that which overwhelmed the entire economy during the years of the Great Depression...

...The tight-money, high-interest policy has constituted a shameless example of the use of powerful public instrumentalities to transfer close to twenty-five billion dollars in national income in a highly regressive direction...

...He is president of the Conference on Economic Progress...

...Further, from mid-1959 until now, the economy has been in virtual stagnation, ominously threatening another serious recession by 1961 if national policies are not fundamentally changed...

...The two Administrations of President Dwight D. Eisenhower have made clearer than ever before in our history the wide gap between the center of gravity of the Republican economic philosophy and performance and that of the Democrats...

...In contrast the liberal economic school, reflected in the Democratic Party, gives top priority to "maximum employment, production, and purchasing power"—the goals of the Employment Act of 1946...

...The next President will need to bring every instrument of national economic policy into harmonious accord with this reconciliation, and he will need through moral leadership rather than through explicit power to win the cooperation of the private sectors of our economy in this effort...

...This school argues that it favors protection of the value of the dollar and prevention of inflation...

...The economic philosophy of the current Administration has made itself felt in other ways besides the direct impact of public policies...

...For we can never afford to forget that the Presidential office subjects a man to the test, not of his prior experience, but of his innate quality—plus the test of whether the party which he leads is prepared to support him...

...Compared with either of them, the previous experience of Franklin Roosevelt was shallow and that of Abraham Lincoln negligible* The foreign policy of a great nation and its President must necessarily be the projection of domestic policy and performance...

...The real problems are not even defined merely by citing their labels and declaring our dedication to their solution...

...Essentially, this explains the difference between the achievements of the Roosevelt-Truman foreign policy and the failures of the Eisenhower foreign policy...

...Economic activity commands a large proportion of our time and effort...

...At the lower growth rate, the true level of unemployment of manpower (full-time unemployment plus the full-time equivalent of part-time employment), standing at the intolerably high figure of more than seven per cent of the civilian labor force during the first half of 1960, might well rise to ten per cent by 1965...

...And let us always remember, as an axiom of our political life, that Democratic Presidents tend to do much better than their previous revelations would suggest, while Republicah Presidents have done the reverse...

...No President, when first elected, was presumed to have had more experience in economic affairs than Herbert Hoover, or more experience in foreign affairs than Dwight Eisenhower...

...The regressive economic policies of the Eisenhower era are not an isolated phenomenon in the history of the Republican Party...

...an Administration which tries to blame "foreign competition" for the economic troubles at home which have resulted overwhelmingly from its own domestic derelictions, will never be able to lead us toward world comity and world peace...

...The idleness of our total productive resources, standing at the equally intolerably high figure of about ten per cent of our reasonably full capacities during the first half of 1960, could rise to fifteen per cent or more by 1965...

...This President Hoover and the Republican Party could never do...

...I want to turn briefly to the international scene...

...This school is opposed to large depressions, but it believes that smaller recessions have "a corrective value...

...This is the real crux of the whole matter of "national goals," even though most of those who prate about these goals do not admit it...

...The liberal school believes that all members of our society should share in our general economic progress...

...Today, if one examines carefully the platforms of the two parties, the speeches of the two Presidential candidates, and the speeches of the majority of those members of the Congress running this year, he is likely to conclude that the Democrats, even if they do a good deal less than they promise, will be preferable to the Republicans even if they do as well as they promise...

...Khrushchev equip him to handle foreign affairs...

...Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom so sagacious a liberal as Walter Lipp-mann characterized in 1932 as the least meritorious of all of the leading Democratic candidates, and as an engaging man with no particular qualifications for the Presidency except his yearning for the office, led the greatest peaceful improvement of a free people in recorded history...

...While I grant there may be some plausibility in this position when one considers only peripheral issues, I believe on central issues there are compelling reasons to choose the Democratic Party and its Presidential candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy...

...It is these Democratic reforms which have safeguarded the economy since 1953 from major depression, despite the hammer blows of the economic policies of the new Republican dispensation...

...Turning from comparison of the economic policies of the two parties to comparison of the two Presidential candidates, I find equally strong ground for concluding that there is an immense difference between them...

...It is significant that at least since the turn of the century, every great forward movement has been sparked by the election of a Democratic President, and every period of apathy or reaction has been sparked by the election of a Republican President...

...And today, in the context of different problems, I feel that Senator Kennedy has the tough and practical mind to grasp the role of Presidential leadership and enable us as a nation to define our basic needs, bring them into harmony, forge the instruments for their attainment, and thus lift the concept of a great national purpose under freedom from a pretentious generality into a splendid performance...

...Thus far in 1960, unemployment of manpower has been about two-thirds higher than during 1953 as a whole despite the recession which began in the middle of that year...

...But the policies it adopts LEON H. KEYSERLING, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Truman, is a consulting economist and attorney...

...This actual rate has been hardly better than half that achieved earlier during peacetime under a different set of national policies...

...The consequences flowing from these Republican policies are easily discernible...

...Republicans have refused to accept the responsibility to use fiscal policy not only to improve the distribution of national income and to render essential public services, but also to promote maximum economic growth and reasonably full employment...

...Practically every national economic policy, during the Eisenhower era, is highly illustrative...

...And the peak of each recovery has left us with far more unemployment of plant and manpower than the peak of the previous recovery...

...An Administration pledged to a philosophy which seeks, albeit unsuccessfully, to balance the Federal budget at the expense of our own national economy, and which throws up exaggerated "balance of payments" scares in an attempt to justify its inadequate international economic policy...

...Even if it is debatable whether Kennedy or Nixon has had more "experience" in foreign affairs, most of the discussion on this subject seems to me pure tripe...

...In other words, faced by a worldwide challenge, how can we achieve our goals under the methods of freedom...

...If the overall growth rate of the economy since early 1953 is repeated during the period from the beginning of 1960 through the end of 1965, we would have during this six-year period at least 450 billion dollars less total national production, and about 23 million man-years less employment opportunity, than if we establish and maintain the five per cent annual growth rate which would reasonably absorb the new technology and the growing labor force...

...Woodrow Wilson's opinions prior to 1912 stamped him as a fairly orthodox Manchester school economic thinker...

...In contrast Herbert Hoover, elected as a great humanitarian, proved in practical terms to be cold as marble to the suffering of his countrymen...

...These New Deal reforms, coupled with further legislation during World War II, enabled a transition from war to peace with an unparalleled minimum of economic dislocation...

...But the number of families in the United States who have real incomes below $4,000 a year is as high now as in 1953, which means that there has been virtually no progress in the liquidation of individual poverty...

...He will need to lead us to a full realization—and quickly—that the great national purposes which we must achieve for domestic and international reasons, within the circumference of our general ideals, have quantification as their very essence...

...This ultimate economic evil of unused and therefore wasted productive resources has been compounded by the regressive nature of the default...

...The disastrous economic policies of the Republican Administrations between 1921 and 1933 require no review...

...But Senator Kennedy has made clear his recognition that a stronger and more just America must be the foundation of all our efforts around the globe...

...The pattern of these events is too symmetrical to be accidental...

...The economic behavior of a nation and a people is perhaps the best single indicator of their total philosophy and conscience...

...The old saw that the basic Republican approach is to water the economic tree at the top can be substantiated by careful examination of the evidence during recent years...

...An economic and social philosophy which is reactionary or static on the home front, which looks with complacency upon high unemployment and deficient education and lagging science within our own borders, cannot respond to the aspirations of the people of the world—people who with resources so much less than our own are struggling mightily to create technology and jobs, science and education...

...And this requires a high enough rate of economic growth to absorb a steadily growing labor force and a rapidly accelerating productivity and technology...

...Today, about one-fourth of all families have incomes below $4,000, and their average income is in the neighborhood of $2,500...

...Such emphasis, by combatting the tendency of consumption to fall behind our power to produce, helps the whole economy...

...The real problems involved in the delineation and pursuit of our great national purposes are how much we intend to do in each area, how fast, how we intend to resolve competing priorities, and by what specific methods...

...Two-thirds of these recent Republican years have been marked by decline into or recovery from recession...

...This school believes it desirable always to hold unemployment of plant and manpower to a minimum...

...While Vice President Nixon is more vigorous, alert, and informed than the man he would like to succeed, and while his artful use of language puts him ostensibly on many sides of many questions, it seems clear that not only his fundamental ties but also his fundamental views on economic matters are inescapably Republican—and we have just examined the unhappy impact of Republican policies on the national economy...

...In its stress upon high economic growth and sustained maximum employment, this school concentrates mainly upon expanding the real purchasing power of the people as a whole...

...They also enabled us, between 1947 and 1950, before the outbreak of the Korean struggle, to maintain an average annual growth rate in excess of four per cent, accompanied by still further improvement in the distribution of the fruits of prosperity...

...An elected leadership which does not understand America cannot comprehend the world...

...While the industrial giants have not fared so well in the long run as they would have if a stable and high rate of economic growth had been maintained, they have been abetted powerfully in the drive toward business concentration and the serious weakening of medium-and small-sized businesses...

...This economic philosophy is called "watering the tree at its roots...

...There are several such major issues, but I would cite especially the economic issue...

...But on grounds of both economic performance and social justice, this school places special emphasis upon positive policies to help the great majority of the people who are in the middle- and low-income groups...

...The "new" farm policy of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson has paid out huge bonanzas to relatively few large land interests...

...Consequently, during the past seven and one-half years, we have suffered, through idleness of productive facilities, a loss considerably in excess of 200 billion dollars in total national production measured in uniform 1959 dollars, and a loss of more than fifteen million man-years of job opportunity...

...The Economic Case for Kennedys Election by LEON H. KEYSERLING In this election year, more than in any I remember, it has become the fashion among many people to assert they will refrain from voting in November because they see "too little difference" in the choices open to them...

...Harry S. Truman, when he became President by accident, was the greatest shock on record to those who were cocksure that he would be a disappointing President...

...Because of the wide gap between the centers of gravity of the two political parties, the election of a Republican President pushes the nation in one direction and the election of a Democratic President pushes it in another...

...Such national goals involve a nationwide concert of effort which reconciles the virtues of responsible free enterprise with the virtues of responsible free government...

...and economic programs are, close to the heart of the action necessary to build the kind of America to which we all aspire and the kind of world in which people can live at peace with one another...

...Even at existing tax rates, the more than $200 billion loss in total national production since early 1953 has resulted in a loss of about $65 billion in Federal, state, and local revenues...

...but as President he immediately initiated and gave superb leadership to a program of economic improvement characterized by the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission (worthy advances in their time...

...If this should happen, the effects on the domestic scene would be compounded by further losses in the world-wide contest of performance between ourselves and the totalitarian states...

...And the lower growth rate, accompanied by the philosophy and policies to which it must be attributed, would, during the same six-year period, deprive Federal, state, and local governments of about 120 billion dollars in revenues at existing tax rates, thus leaving us still less able "to afford" to service the highest priorities of our domestic and worldwide needs...

...The conservative school leans toward "watering the economic tree at the top," in the sincere belief that favoring the wealthier economic groups, those who "save and invest," is most beneficial to the whole economy in the long run...

...It has never become fully committed to the goal of "full employment...

...It has frequently asserted that unemployment of manpower and plant, considerably above minimum levels, helps to make the economy work "more efficiently...

...He seems to me, at this juncture, quite as firmly in the liberal and forward-looking tradition as Roosevelt was in the campaign of 1932, and perhaps more consistent and less vague...

...The next President of the United States, in the economic field, will need much more than a general philosophy and nobility of intent...

...economic justice is close to the core of social justice and fundamental morality...

...Fully half of all families have incomes below the $6,000 figure which at least in urban and suburban areas is generally regarded as the amount required to maintain an adequate but modest standard of living...

...It looks not only at whether the dollar is getting bigger or smaller, but also at how many dollars there are and who is getting them...

...The Republican Party reflects the conservative economic school, which stands for what might be called "the economics of scarcity...

...Vice President Nixon may feel that his "debates" in Russia with Mr...

...Even though our total economy has grown only about one-half as fast as it should since early 1953, total national income and average family income in real terms are obviously considerably higher than they were seven and one-half years ago...

...Republican policies of spending and taxation have exacerbated these regressive trends...

...The lower growth rate would thus have a devastating effect upon private economic well-being...

...But ultimately the liberal approach seeks to protect human beings...

...a continuation of international mistakes could destroy us...

...And there is a center of gravity in each of the two parties, even though there are opposite poles in each which can be cited to provide a rationale for apathy on the part of people who are discontented or insufficiently informed...

...From early 1953 until now, the actual rate of overall economic growth of the United States has averaged annually only about one-half the amount required to maintain reasonably full use of a rapidly accelerating technology and a constantly growing labor force...

...The liberal school—and the Democratic Party—are deeply concerned about protection of the dollar and prevention of inflation...

...to achieve this end frequently boil down to doing relatively more for those who have more dollars, and for those engaged in the business of managing money...

...And if we do not reverse the course, if Republican economic policies persist, the future is even more foreboding than the recession now widely predicted for 1961...

...It would be uncharitable at the moment to ask whether President Eisenhower has lived up to expectations...

...He is certainly sincere and unequivocal in his espousal of the Democratic platform, which seems to me the most commendable adopted by any party in the United States within the experience of those now living...

...Indeed, Senator Kennedy's record as a whole compares favorably with that of any other man in this century, as of the time when he first presented himself to the American people for election to the Presidency...

...The Republican economic policies which have halted progress in the reduction of personal poverty in America have simultaneously and through mutual interaction made poverty widespread in the performance of our public responsibilities...

...But it did not prevent a courageous and forward-looking President in the Democratic tradition from building an enduring structure of economic reform, and accomplishing the humanization of government which at that time was the alternative to revolution...

...In national defense and international economic cooperation, education and health and housing, development of our natural resources and redevelopment of our cities, social security and the general welfare, the wounds inflicted by this neglect are everywhere apparent and the scars will remain for many years even if we should promptly reverse our present course...

...For the very promises of the Republican spokesmen, when carefully analyzed, are promises to continue a philosophy and pattern of performance which it would be much better to abandon than to perpetuate...