A friend told me about her grandfather, on a striking picket line at Ford Motor Co. in freezing winter, during the Depression. The poor workers, peacefully striking on government streets, were sprayed with water by the Detroit fire department, who was there with the police. The water rapidly cooled towards freezing.
This kind of gov't cruelty to protect the rich and their "property rights" is, to a large extent, the impetus to the creation of such socialistic/leftist orgs as the ACLU, etc. I'm sure most of FDR's New Deal was based on an attempt to solve "The Problem of the Poor People". And very subject to the various existing political influences. If there was a capitalistic system with very few or no poor people, it's answer to the question of the poor would be extremely interesting. Until there are "better" answers, in practical examples, of systems that are "more capitalist with fewer poor", the socialist example (threat?) remains seductive to many, many people. I'm keeping my eye out for answers, including this Armchair list. Tom Grey PS I found this Abstract on the net: ----- Katherine Baicker, Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz NBER Working Paper No.w5889* Issued in January 1997 ---- Abstract ----- Unemployment compensation in the United States was signed into law in August 1935 as part of the omnibus Social Security Act. Drafted in a period of uncertainty and economic distress, the portions that dealt with unemployment insurance were crafted to achieve a multiplicity of goals, among them passage of the act and a guarantee of its constitutionality. Along with the federal-state structure went experience-rating and characteristics added by the states, such as the limitation on duration of benefits. The U.S. unemployment compensation system is distinctive among countries by virtue of its federal-state structure, experience-rating, and limitation on benefits. We contend that these features were products of the times, reflecting expediency more than efficiency, and thus that UI would have been different had it been passed in another decade. But how different is the UI system in the United States because of these features, and how have they affected the U.S. labor market? We present evidence showing that more seasonality in manufacturing employment in 1909-29 is related to higher UI benefits from 1947 to 1969, if a state's manufacturing employment share is below the national mean. Lobbying activities of seasonal industries appear important in the evolution of the parameters. We also present suggestive evidence on the relationship between declining seasonality and experience-rating. *Published: Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the TwentiethCentury. Edited by Michael D. Bordo, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White,Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 227-263. You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery. Information for subscribers and others expecting no-cost downloads If you normally receive free downloads but are having trouble with the new system, please contact us and use this link to download the paper. ------
