The Fight for Economic Rights Has Come Full Circle
And the neoliberals are mad as hell!
In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid out a plan before Congress that enumerated 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.”
FDR warned Congress that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
Today that sentence can be updated to, “People who are constantly in debt, working minimum wage jobs that require all of their time and energy, always fighting battles just to get basic things done, will lose perspective on what’s possible, and therefore vote for a dictator to make their lives easier.”
Which, of course, is a false promise.
This second Bill of Rights included:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
In the decades since Roosevelt gave that speech, portions of his bill of rights were put into place. But, starting in the ‘80s, the “pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington” have gotten savvier in their slight of hand to keep people poor and ignorant.
They are also the first to sound the alarm when any American dares ask for these rights.
“Socialist!” they yell.
Remember, these economic rights were proposed by a man considered to be one of the greatest presidents in the nation’s history.
But the Second Bill of Rights wasn’t the most “socialist” part of Roosevelt’s speech to Congress. He also proposed:
A realistic tax law—which will tax all unreasonable profits, both individual and corporate, and reduce the ultimate cost of the war to our sons and daughters.
A continuation of the law for the renegotiation of war contracts—which will prevent exorbitant profits and assure fair prices to the Government. For two long years I have pleaded with the Congress to take undue profits out of war.
A cost of food law—which will enable the Government (a) to place a reasonable floor under the prices the farmer may expect for his production; and (b) to place a ceiling on the prices a consumer will have to pay for the food he buys. This should apply to necessities only; and will require public funds to carry out. It will cost in appropriations about one percent of the present annual cost of the war.
Early reenactment of the stabilization statute of October, 1942. This expires June 30, 1944, and if it is not extended well in advance, the country might just as well expect price chaos by summer.
A national service law - which, for the duration of the war, will prevent strikes, and, with certain appropriate exceptions, will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this Nation.
If any of these proposals were brought today, Larry Summers would be spitting venom. Remember, this was the guy who said in order to get post-pandemic inflation down, we must increase unemployment for the working class. Luckily, his assumptions were proven wrong.
This was also that guy who, when he was president of Harvard, said that girls just weren’t good at math, and who condoned Mark Zuckerberg building a website that rated how hot his female classmates were.
But this is also the guy who Barak Obama relied on for economic advice.
Which shows just how far the Democratic party has come since that 1944 Roosevelt speech.
Free Buses! For Shame!
This week, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York. And the oligarchs and neoliberal economists are apoplectic.
Bill Ackman - who got then-Harvard University president Claudine Gay fired for allowing criticism of Israel on campus - has pledged to put hundreds of millions of dollars into electing anyone other than Mamdani in the general election.
Mamdani’s two principal rivals will likely be current Mayor Eric Adams and former governor Andrew Cuomo, running as independents.
Adams, of course, was indicted for bribery before Trump decided to conditionally pardon him so that the administration could hold a Sword of Damacles over his head. And Cuomo had to resign after numerous sexual harassment allegations going back to the 1990s.
But billionaire Bill Ackman thinks either of these men would be better than a guy who wants to make buses free (as Mamdani noted, the Staten Island Ferry is free), create government-run grocery stores to help New Yorkers eat healthily without breaking the bank, enact rent control - and make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.
You know, everything Roosevelt proposed in 1944, except free buses or transportation. Dwight Eisenhower, though, used government funds in the 1950s to create the interstate highway system - which our economy can not live without.
If Larry Summers or Bill Ackman or Elon Musk had been in charge in the 1950s, all of our highways would be privately owned, and many roads we drive on every day probably wouldn’t exist.
You know, because they’re not profitable.
As former NY Times ombudsman Margaret Sullivan notes, in 2021 India Walton, who also identified as a socialist, won the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, but “the powers that be got together and made sure the dismal status quo continued with the reelection of Byron Brown in the general election.”
Brown, though, abandoned his office for a cushy job running Off Track Betting.
Because in 21st century America, public service is just stepping stone to private sector wealth.
As Robert Reich notes, people are getting tired of that kind kind of public corruption.
“The largest force in American politics today is antiestablishment fury at a system rigged by big corporations and the wealthy to make them even richer and more powerful,” Reich writes.
That’s the force that brought people out for Mamdani. That’s the force that brought people out for Bernie Sanders, and Alexander Ocasio Cortez. It’s also the force that Roosevelt warned about in that speech to Congress.
“If history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920’s,” Roosevelt said, “then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism here at home.”
I would say we have yielded to more than the spirit of fascism in 2025. Economically, though, we have certainly yielded to the “normalcy” of the 1920s.
And, unless we change course fast, we will suffer another Great Depression. Or worse.
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Carrie Kaufman is veteran print and radio journalist who has always been more interested in what people are avoiding than what they are talking about. She founded and published PerformInk, a Chicago theatre and film industry trade paper, which covered economics, jobs, politics, racism, sexism, power, real estate - all through the lens of the artist. She then moved on to public radio, where she hosted talk shows in Vegas and Wisconsin, which is when she realized she was too old to do bad journalism.
Check out past and present work on Muckrack.
Larry Kudlow, no? That prick in a pin-stripe suit?