HOW TO WAGE WAR ON LOW PAY

Submitted by Dan Graff on November 8, 2018 – 3:43pm

When the stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the worst economic crisis in U.S. history, the American people and policymakers combined to remake the democratic capitalist order with workers and consumers at the center. The New Deal — the most ambitious program of regulations and reforms in US history — secured bank accounts, insured home loans, mandated the minimum wage, required employer participation in an old-age pension program, and encouraged unionism to give laborers a tool to fight for higher pay and a voice at work. The goal was to promote widespread prosperity via a commitment to “social security,” to use the language of its most famous law — and the New Deal framework did just that for the thirty years following 1945. We need a New New Deal to confront our current era of economic insecurity.

Read the full column, from Oct. 1, 2018, at The Observer.