On January 11, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a second Bill of Rights for Americans. It’s sadder than hell that people have moved so far to the right in this country that these wouldn’t even be considered today:
“Among these are:
— 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.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.
For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.”
***
So what happened?
Eighty years ago, as the tide was turning in our favor in World War II, people with foresight started thinking about what the world would be like when peace came.
With the possible exception of a few weeks in late September 2001, I don’t think there was another time in the last hundred years when we were as united as Americans than during World War II. Most people made some sort of sacrifice as their contribution to the war effort, and the general consensus was that those who actually served in the military and saw combat deserved the benefits of the GI Bill after the war.
If veterans could get a free college education and low-rate mortgages to purchase homes, few people complained.
Go back to the top of this piece and read FDR’s Second Bill of Rights again. There’s nothing in there about free stuff or government handouts. The point of it all was that as long as people were willing to work hard, they should be able to make a good life for themselves and their families.
Veterans’ benefits were certainly a big reason the 20 years or so after World War II were the heyday of the working class. They were the years in which income inequality was at its lowest of the 20th century. It was a time when a man with nothing more than a high school education could get a job — often in manufacturing — where he could make enough money to support a family, own his own home, buy a new car every few years and take a vacation.
What changed all that?
Leaving politics out of it, and not blaming poor old Ayn Rand or her minions, I think there were two factors, at least one of which couldn’t haave been changed.
First off, in the years after WWII, there was only one country of any significance that wasn’t pretty well devastated by the war. Europe and Japan basically needed to be rebuilt. That meant they couldn’t compete economically, particularly in the area of manufacturing. It’s why U.S. manufacturing boomed, with cities like Trenton, N.J., taking great pride in a great purpose.
Once Europe and Japan were rebuilt enough to have their own manufacturing bases operating again, we couldn’t dominate as we once had. Still, that didn’t mean we had to stop making things. That was our choice and it was a poor one.
The second factor, one that could have been avoided or at least mitigated, was simpler.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines came back from the war, got married and had babies.
Lots of babies.
Too many babies.
In the 45-year period from 1900 till the end of WWII, U.S. population climbed from 76.2 million to 139.9 million. In a similar period from 1945 to 1990, population grew to 250.1 million.
That wasn’t all my choice. We were a good 15 years into the Baby Boom before contraception became seriously effective and 20 years in before the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v Connecticut that married couples had the right to practice birth control.
When the postwar babies began coming of age as America’s largest generation, everything became more competitive and also more expensive.
Second Bill of Rights?
No chance. America became a place where you get what you can pay for and if cannot pay, you do without.
They had FDR, we have Donald Trump.
This used to be a helluva food country.