Not to take away from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but the "Freedom Budget," which Bayard Rustin enlisted Leon Keyserling to draft was a debacle. Keyserling was the architect of the NSC-68 idea that a tripling of arms budget could be paid for by "siphoning off" a portion of the additional economic growth stimulated by arms spending. The so-called Freedom Budget, announced some 16 years after the secret NSC-68 had been adopted as government policy relied on the same logic that vastly expanded spending on human services could be financed through an economic growth dividend without impinging on existing military spending (recall that this was during the escalation of the Vietnam War, which Keyserling supported vigorously.
Lo and behold! The magic bastard-Keynesian card trick that worked for selling increased arms spending fell flat on its face when the objective was spending on "those people" (if you know what I mean). Who would have ever thunk it? Keyserling was confident that all of the Budget�s programs could be paid > for without tax increases or cutbacks on defense, international, and space > funding by utilizing what he called the �economic growth dividend.� The > �growth dividend� was the aggregate gross national product increase that > Keyserling anticipated between 1965 and 1975. This increase was based on a > 5% annual growth rate estimate, which in retrospect may have been > unrealistic. Keyserling suggested that only 1/13th of this growth dividend > would cover all costs of the freedom budget. This figure was rhetorically > useful, but in reality the relevant figure was the increase in federal tax > revenues that would have resulted from such growth. At Keyserling�s growth > rate, tax revenues would have increased by $400 billion, making the $185 > billion he proposed spending nearer to 47% of added federal tax revenues > (Wallach, 2003). On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 3:47 PM, michael yates <[email protected]> wrote: > Paul Le Blanc has put together a good slide show: JOBS AND FREEDOM: THE > MARCH ON WASHINGTON AND THE FREEDOM BUDGET. The book referred to in Paul's > description below is A Freedom Budget for All Americans: > Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for > Economic Justice Today. Description of the book can be found at > http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb3607/ > > > "Here is a slide-show on the civil rights movement, the 1963 March on > Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the Freedom Budget that was advanced > by A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King and others. It is > related to a book by Michael Yates and myself that will be coming out in > August. (In the slideshow there is an error -- C. T. Vivian is wrongly > identified as Fred Shuttlesworth -- but hopefully this will be corrected > shortly.)" > > http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/leblanc100513.html > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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