Saturday, February 16, 2019

Suicide Pact

From PJB at Chronicles:
After reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as "the longest suicide note in history." The phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic candidates for president. The Green New Deal is designed to recall the halcyon days of the 1930s, when, so the story goes, FDR came to Washington to enact the historic reforms that rescued America from the Great Depression. Only that story is more than a small myth. 
The unemployment rate when FDR took the oath in 1933 was 25 percent. It never fell below 14 percent through the 1930s. In June 1938, despite huge Democratic majorities in Congress, FDR was presiding over a nation where unemployment was back up to 19 percent. World War II and the conscription of 16 million young men gave us "full employment." And the war's end and demobilization saw the return of real prosperity in 1946, after FDR was dead. 
Yet this Green New Deal is nothing if not ambitious. (Read more.)
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