Stiglitz, Ferguson talk Social Security and Labor Rights at Hyde Park

A celebration at Hyde Park marked the passage of two laws that changed America, and Roosevelt fellows were on hand to explain their legacy and vital role in providing security for our citizens. To view webcasts of this and other panels in the series “1935 and the Enduring New Deal”, click here.

On Sunday, a packed hall gathered to hear Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate and Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute;  Roosevelt Senior Fellow Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at the UMass, Boston; and other distinguished experts discuss the legislative triumphs of the New Deal in a panel, “1935 and the Enduring New Deal: The Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act”. In 1935,  FDR guided the course of the New Deal from a focus on relief efforts to that of reform policies, launching what is sometimes called the “Second New Deal”. Andy Rich, President of the Roosevelt, provided an introduction to the panel. Seated in the audience was Anna Roosevelt, granddaughter of FDR and Eleanor and Board Chair of the Roosevelt Institute.

Panelist Larry W. DeWitt, a Social Security Administration historian, opened the discussion by pronouncing Social Security “the most important of FDR’s accomplishments”, while James Roosevelt, grandson of FDR and ER and a member of the Roosevelt Institute’s Board of Governors, made no bones of the fact that lies and half-truths about the program are being circulated widely. He pointed out Social Security’s financial soundness and its success in the alleviation of poverty among the elderly. Transaction fees, he noted, were very low for the program, but Wall Street wheeler-dealers, he warned, desired privatized funds so that they could charge lucrative fees.

Ferguson focused on the complicated relationship between Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act, commenting that celebrations of the latter were much less common than commemorations of the former. Social Security, he suggested, enjoyed widespread support from the beginning, even among parts of big business; by contrast, the National Labor Relations Act was and remains the “ugly duckling” of the Second New Deal. But, he noted, the spectacle of millions of workers democratically organizing themselves into unions in the midst of a world depression was remarkable, with few parallels in world history. Ferguson observed that organized labor evolved into a major defender of Social Security and supported the program’s expansion after World War II. He wondered whether Social Security could long survive in its present form without the labor movement’s reinvigoration.

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Brigid O’Farrell, author of She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker, emphasized Eleanor Roosevelt’s tireless efforts on labor reform and her particular attention the plight of female workers. She discussed ER’s membership in the newspaper union and refusal to cross picket lines, and the firmness of her belief that labor unions were an expression of American democracy.

Stiglitz began his remarks riffing on Rahm Emanuel’s famous line about not letting a crisis go to waste. “Not only did we waste the crisis,” observed Stiglitz, “we might have made it worse.” He criticized income inequality in America, noting that disparities were as bad as they were in the 1920s. He further stated that “insufficient aggregate demand” was crippling the economy, and described how demand was sustained by a bubble before the crisis. Stiglitz condemned what he saw as a systematic shift of money from those who would have spent it (the majority of us) to those who don’t need to spend it (the wealthy). He went on to debunk the notion that increases in the minimum wage would lead to unemployment and spoke of the need for labor market legislation to rebalance bargaining  between workers and employees. On Social Security, Stiglitz pointed out that there had been a total market failure on retirement funds, explaining that there was obviously a demand for funds that protect retirees from inflation, and yet no adequate market response to that need. Social Security, he said, had provided what the private sector failed to provide. He also echoed DeWitt’s comments on the private sector’s underlying view of Social Security as a potential revenue source.

Want more? You’re in luck! The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and the Roosevelt Institute will host two more panels in Hyde Park:

Sunday, October 24, join New Deal 2.0 editor Lynn Parramore and other panelists for “The Works Progress Administration and the Rural Electrification Administration”. Then on Sunday, November 21, check out “The Arts and History Programs” panel featuring, among others, Cynthia Koch, Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.