Read Online Screwed the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class by Thom Hartmann - Free Book Online

primarily the social spending programs that FDR created and integrated with unionization, antitrust laws, and the expansion of citizen participation in our democracy that inevitably occurs when a middle class grows.
    In a time of crisis, instead of giving tax cuts to billionaires, FDR went directly to the working class to stimulate the economy. The Civilian Conservation Corps hired young men ages eighteen to twenty-five to plant trees, create animal sanctuaries, fight pollution, and maintain the national forests. The Public Works Administration paid skilled construction workers to build infrastructure, including the Triborough Bridge in New York City. The Works Progress Administration (later the Works Projects Administration, or WPA) put thousands more to work improving our country, paying skilled craftsmen and artists to put on plays, create murals, build buildings, and otherwise improve the commons. Each of these programs paid a living wage, providing a direct stimulus to the economy.
    FDR made sure that Americans would be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor by establishing Social Security. A government-run insurance program, Social Security continues to provide money for the disabled while ensuring that all working Americans have some savings for retirement.
    In addition to creating a strong economy, FDR acted to control the game of business. He set up the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to ensure that people would be able to keep the money they saved in banks. He imposed regulations on stock sales, protecting middle-class people who invested their savings in the stock market. He moved against monopolies through the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which broke up large electrical conglomerates, and he fought for an expansion of existing antitrust legislation.
    Along with fighting for the rights of We the People in the present, Roosevelt looked to the future. He furthered the cause of public education through the GI Bill, which sent millions of young men and women to college and technical schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Although it was never carefully measured, some historians suggest that well over half of the GI Bill college graduates in the 1950s were the first in their families to graduate from college. Not only did this provide America with a huge competitive edge in an educated workforce but it also represented the first and largest shift in American history of people from the ranks of the working poor into the ranks of the working middle class. Not until Lyndon Baines Johnson declared a War on Poverty in the 1960s, cutting poverty in half in its first four years, would a program so effectively provide for social mobility.
    Roosevelt's programs worked. His economic stimulus programs put money in the pockets of the people, and their purchases created consumer demand, which led entrepreneurs to start businesses to meet that demand, which meant they had to hire workers, who were well paid because 35 percent of America was unionized. Those well-paid workers bought more goods, creating more demand, and America became the world's strongest economy through most of the twentieth century. The New Deal ushered in what has been called the Golden Age of the middle class, from 1940 to 1980.
    The basic philosophy of the New Deal was a fusion of the thinking of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson—a platform of progressive economics and personal freedom combined with the empowerment of the average person. Roosevelt's message to business was simple: you're welcome to make money in America—in fact, we
want
you to—but you must understand that you are making money within our society, using the superstructure and the substructure of our democracy, and therefore you are answerable to our democracy. The economy exists to serve the members of our democracy, not the other way around. If you want to play the game of business, you're welcome to do so according to our new rules, which protect workers and