Stronger opposition came from Democrats, who dismissed the $3,000 credit to employers for every job created or saved as ripe for abuse and difficult to administer.
Oh, but an $800 billion stimulus package and a $3 trillion budget of funds that are not yours to begin with are immune to such issues. Read more here. FDR was always open to other ideas, lots of them.
Amen. People are ready to praise the bailouts of unprofitable business structures as FDR-like, but are simultaneously eager to forget that his temporary programs, such as the CCC, also allowed for structural unemployment and industrial shifts. With so many politicians claiming that we need to refocus our energy policies, one would think that they would at least consider aiding the production and employment of fledgling corporations and industries. Although historical data would seem to suggest that the war was more responsible for ending crisis in FDR’s time, he at least didn’t have his long-term plans structured as wrongly as we evidently yearn to have ours structured now.
It occurs to me that the spending-induced Keynesian prescription emerged during a very time. The economy has changed a great deal in 75 years. The proportion of the workforce engaged in services is far higher. Are those of us who get laid off from our service jobs in info tech, finance and health care expected to rush out to accept work building bridges? Have the central planners even considered this as they plot our futures for us?