Dollars & Sense: Economic Rights, Then and Now

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Economic Rights, Then and Now
January 11th, 2010 marks the 66th anniversary of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.

By Susan Feiner


Economic security today? Yes. FDR’s January 11,1944 State of the Union Address unveiled 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.” Roosevelt, citing “accepted, self-evident economic truths,” called economic security the “foundation of true individual freedom.” He continued, “equality in the pursuit of happiness” requires the right to “a useful job” that “provide(s) adequate food and clothing and recreation,” “a decent home” and, “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.”

That was 66 years ago.

Today’s unemployment—nearly 30 million people when you include those working part-time and those so discouraged they’ve stopped looking—rivals that of the Great Depression. Record numbers of households—their earnings stuck at 1998 levels—are worried about food and clothing. Recreation? Forget it. And for the millions whose homes are foreclosed decent housing is a distant memory.

Is it possible that economic policy makers don’t understand the magnitude of the crisis facing Americans whose livelihoods depend on jobs? Don’t they care? Or does economic ideology so blind them that they can’t see what was so obvious to FDR? “ ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” We ignore this at our peril. Today, as in 1944, “the grave dangers of ‘rightist reaction’” threaten economic security and political freedom. With insight and prescience FDR warned that if we return to business-as-usual after we have “conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.” .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2010/0110feiner.html