THE ROAD TO FULL EMPLOYMENT
Chase, Stuart
The Road To Full Employment By STUART CHASE Stuart Chase's article begins a tremendously important series of three discussions on Full Employment. Other articles will follow in early issues by...
...As they stand, these plans will not produce one extra job now that the war is over, and Government orders are being cut from 100 billion dollars a year to 30 billion or less...
...With the British election results now before them, perhaps they will shout a little less...
...The boys were all for full employment, naturally...
...I could say that Mr...
...Max Lerner...
...The bill provides that a Joint Committee of Senate and House go right to work on the President's message, and by March 1 get a resolution on the floor of both Houses for action...
...There is no doubt that we have reached the first stage, as public opinion polls show...
...But I cannot recall one which was politically available, in the sense that it could be put in the form of a bill and have a chance of reaching the floor of Congress for action...
...Pay for these projects out of taxes wherever possible...
...But I could say: Get behind the Murray Bill...
...S-380 has helped me off similar spots more than once...
...private enterprise by loans to small business, and by Government factfinding and research...
...Pabst, the beer king, recently put up $50,000 for prize plans and received hundreds of them...
...ANOTHER great virtue of S-380 is that-it* is designed to prevent unemployment from...
...If we need more, nothing is lost by laying this excellent foundation...
...The fear of depression breeds depression, by freezing purchasing power...
...Wagner was active in its support, the man* who fathered both the great labor relations bill and the social security act...
...Some were awful, some were touching, some were very competent...
...Use the whole tool kit available—banking and currency legislation, wages and hours regulation, foreign trade and investment, agricultural policy, social security rates, and above all, tax adjustments, especially incentive taxes...
...THIS conclusion was brought home to me very forcibly at a GI Bull Session on postwar employment...
...British business men know that the noble Lord is the best friend they've got...
...The compensatory idea of government stepping in to promote employment when private enterprise had gone as far as it could, looked good to them...
...There is no long-haired theory about S-380, nor any clanking of Phi Beta Kappa keys...
...Probably 75 per cent of all economists under 50 in this country acclaim those principles...
...Its opponents may succeed in denying the country even this sensible and conservative program...
...If the people really mean what they say in the Gallup Polls, if full employment is their heart's desire, here is the only available approach yet offered...
...g'etting started, rather than to cure it after it has become serious...
...Is faced with insuperable administrative difficulties...
...It will keep cramps out of the spending arm...
...It is charged that S-380: Is communistic...
...Indeed they were all saying that last Fall, Republicans and Democrats alike...
...What they wanted, however, was not fine aims and philosophies and systems, but something concrete they could get behind and vote and fight for...
...Fourth: as a last resort, finance more housing projects, more conservation and public works, using private contractors wherever possible...
...S-380 goes into action before people begin to get scared...
...Discussing the plans also helps to educate the public-—which, ¦ however, is a long, slow process...
...I couldn't tell that room full of privates, corporals, and top sergeants to get behind the 3rd prize-winner in the Pabst awards, or behind Dr...
...If a boom or a crash subsequently develops, then the people will know exactly whom to blame...
...Is down the road to serfdom...
...S-380 is aimed directly at full employment with a maximum of free enterprise...
...James E. Murray, author of the Full Employment Bill, and James Patton, president of the National Farmers' Union...
...It gives not only GI's but the American people something to put their teeth into...
...I hope he's leading a trend...
...Third: encourage more consumer spending by lowering social security payroll taxes...
...Some 70 billion dollars of orders and purchasing power are going whistling out of the economy, and that means about 30 million jobs to be refinanced and relocated...
...If the Los Angeles area, or the New England area, goes downhill, it may require some time for national remedies to take effect locally...
...It does not guarantee specific markets or profits...
...Lange's plan in the Political Science Quarterly for March 1945, or Fortune's Special Supplement on the Domestic Economy...
...Ordinary enterprise includes profit-making business...
...It is thus on the Chinese model where you pay the doctor for keeping you well...
...The Telephone Company and other large utilities do estimate their businesses not only for one, but for many years in advance...
...Indeed my chief objection to the bill is that it may lean over backwards to promote private ventures when public ventures would make people happier and wealthier...
...Only recently have the Holy Rollers for free enterprise begun to shout that planning for full employment leads us down the road to serfdom...
...Other articles will follow in early issues by Sen...
...It does not guarantee existing appropriation procedure in Congress...
...Another legitimate objection is that the bill does nothing immediately to relieve a local unemployment crisis...
...Is rife with deficit spending...
...It is a straight compensatory plan, as spotlighted by Gov...
...It is true that a large and noisy group of business men look on Lord Keynes as a red menace, but this is because they have not grown up...
...It does not provide compulsory assignment of workers to jobs...
...Observe carefully what the bill does not do: It does not authorize the Government to operate anything...
...The second, however, presents a problem...
...THE opposition may be expected to rely chiefly on ir-relevancies and misrepresentation...
...Second: further stimulate...
...It is hard to understand their mental processes...
...Congress and the nation will thus be told what the outlook for the year is, and what steps the President thinks Congress ought to take to keep either inflation or deflation out of the economic picture...
...It is now squarely up to Congress when it reconvenes next week...
...Indeed the sheer fact that it is there, ready to go into action like a hook-and-ladder company, is bound to make people feel more confident...
...It needed public pressure, especially from veterans, to get it onto the floor of the Senate...
...Murray, and Sens...
...Several of the winning papers were excellent...
...So what...
...O'Mahoney was behind it, the man who fathered the TNEC hearings, the most far-reaching analysis of the American economy ever undertaken...
...It does not fix prices, wages or output...
...They come from every nook and corner of the Republic, on post cards, in letters, in packages, in piano crates...
...The principles upon which it is based are now considered "sound" in many highly respectable quarters...
...If people are not sure of their future income they will not spend...
...Ever since the 1929 crash, people have been sending me plans to end depressions...
...NOBODY can know for sure whether S-380 is a powerful enough engine to smooth out the business cycle and eliminate serious unemployment...
...The last pbint will be given a terrific play, on the assumption that no business man can estimate his business for the coming year, so the Government cannot...
...Thomas E. Dewey said that in his campaign last Fall...
...They knew about the Wagner Act and Social Security...
...I should have been on a very hot spot indeed without Bill S-380 to point to...
...If the economy is so active that an inflationary boom appears to be in prospect, the President is supposed to recommend that Congress raise tax rates to check the boom,,and use the proceeds to pay off some of the debt...
...It compensates for any gaps left in the economy by ordinary enterprise...
...does not guarantee specific jobs to specific workers...
...But it is altogether the best plan to try first...
...TF at any time there are not sufficient jobs in pri-i- vate employment to go around, then Government can and must create additional job opportunities...
...There is nothing radical or new about it...
...So they were printed in a pretty booklet, there was a news story about them, a dinner at the Waldorf, and that was the last heard of them...
...This hurricane of plans shows that many Americans still have fertile and inventive minds, and are deeply concerned over the critical economic question...
...I could say that Sen...
...Tell us what we can do to give that stuff a kick upstairs...
...I could say to the boys that Sen...
...If it looks as if savings for the year were going to run ahead of investments, resulting in idle money and idle men, then the President is supposed to make recommendations to close the gap, and thus head off unemployment...
...One can be pretty sure that some plan for full employment is inevitable...
...From where I sit, schools and hospitals look like a better investment than chewing gum and patent medicines...
...We know it can help, and with a minimum of Government interference...
...We shall go back on the grand old WPA, unless something better can be made politically available...
...Who said that—Norman Thomas...
...When the next election rolls around, may God have mercy on their souls...
...Is contrary to the American way of life, whatever that means...
...Third, the war has brought about an enormous advance in statistical methods...
...The order of these recommendations is significant: First: stimulate non-Federal expenditures by business, consumers, state and local governments...
...I wiped the sweat from my brow and got off the platform...
...A good unemployment insurance system can, however, handle this situation...
...That means fewer sales and hence more layoffs down the line...
...Guess again...
...The answers to this assumption are three...
...First, enough people must want it to make it politically feasible...
...Is made up of shaky statistical estimates...
...They seemed satisfied after I had described S-380 to them...
...La Follette...
...S. Chase...
...AVERY important feature of the bill is the provision for casting, not a Federal Government budget, but a national budget, in advance...
...I would guess I've had 3,000 of them...
...Here was something concrete, politically matured, and ready to go...
...La Follette of Wisconsin and Thomas of Utah...
...There are 2 stages in planning for full employment...
...Second, while one small company may have difficulty in estimating, when all companies are included we can take advantage of the laws of statistical probability, with far more dependable results...
...The world is in that mood...
...That gave the boys something to put their teeth into...
...Second, the plan itself must not only make economic sense, but be politically available...
...Many will of course be self-liquidating...
...But the plan which win come out of the turmoil and violence of 20 million unemployed, a large fraction of them battle-scarred veterans, will be something to make S-380 look like a new edition of Adam Smith.* * * * *Mo,rk SvJlivzn, the stai~d:,2t s?:«fc ?">t the point, and on August U came out strongly for the bill...
...Perhaps this is all we need...
...it provides the machinery whereby both President and Congress must take action, and be definitely responsible...
...The opposition has begun, and the outlines of the case are clear...
...Vinson, our new Secretary of the Treasury, was behind it, as well as Sen...
...non-profit undertakings like cooperatives, colleges, churches, clubs, foundations ; local government activities—such as streets, schools, sewers, police, fire, parks, traffic control...
...Dewey: If private business can't provide jobs, then the Government must...
...S-380 provides for no action on specific matters...
...Every January the President, with the help of the administrative departments, must estimate the national gross product, the savings, the investment outlets, the levels of employment, for the coming year...
...A third virtue is that the bill is in the orthodox Keynesian tradition...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 35
