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This political history analyzes the failure of the United States to adopt viable employment policies, follows U.S. manpower training and employment policy from the 1946 Employment Act to the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982. Between these two landmarks of legislation in the War on Poverty, were attempts to create public service employment (PSE), the abortive Humphrey-Hawkins Act, and the beleaguered Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).Mucciaroni's traces the impact of economic ideas and opinions on federal employment policy. Efforts at reform, he believes, are frustrated by the tension between economic liberty and social equality that restricts the role of government and holds workers themselves accountable for success or failure. Professional economists, especially Keynesians, have shaped the content and timing of policy innovations in such ways as to limit employment programs to a social welfare mission, rather than broader, positive economic objectives. As a result, neither labor nor management has been centrally involved in making policy, and employment programs have lacked a stable and organized constituency committed to their success. Finally, because of the fragmentation of U.S. political institutions, employment programs are not integrated with economic policy, are hampered by conflicting objectives, and are difficult to carry out effectively. As chronic unemployment and the United States' difficulties in the world marketplace continue to demand attention, the importance of Mucciaroni's subject will grow. For political scientists, economists, journalists, and activists, this book will be a rich resource in the ongoing debate about the deficiencies of liberalism and the best means of addressing one of the nation's most pressing social and political problems. Mucciaroni's provocative theoretical analysis is buttressed by several years' research at the U.S. Department of Labor, access to congressional hearings, reports, and debates, and interviews with policy makers and their staffs. It will interest all concerned with the history of liberal social policy in the postwar period.
Through moments of social protest, policy debate, and popular mobilization, this book follows the campaign for economic democracy and the fight for full employment in the United States. Starting in the 1930s, Dennis explores its intellectual and philosophical underpinnings, the class struggle that determined the fate of legislation and the role of left-wing civil rights activists in its revival. Demonstrating how the campaign for full employment intersected with movements for women's liberation and civil rights, it explores how social groups and oppressed minorities interpreted and appropriated the promise of full employment. For many, full employment provided an indispensable path to racial and gender emancipation. In this book, Dennis uncovers the class dimensions and the resistance to full employment in the US. He demonstrates how the recurring debates over full employment consistently exposed the contradictions inherent in a capitalist society and challenged the assertion that an allegedly free enterprise system automatically generated employment for all.
This volume describes the many ways presidential actions have affected the development of capitalism in the post–World War II era. Contributors show how, since Harry S. Truman took office in 1945, the American "Consumer-in-Chief " has exerted a decisive hand as well as behind-the-scenes influence on the national economy. And, by extension, on the everyday lives of Americans. The Employment Act of 1946 expanded presidential responsibility to foster prosperity and grow the economy. However, the details and consequences of the president’s budget often remain obscured because of the budget’s size and complexity, perpetuating an illusion that presidents matter less than markets. Essays in this volume highlight the impact of presidential decisions on labor, gender discrimination, affirmative action, poverty, student loans, and retirement planning. They examine how a president can influence the credit card economy, the rebuilding of postindustrial cities, growth in the energy sector and the software industry, and even advances in genetic engineering. They also look at how economic gains in one particular area can have ramifications in other areas. National defense strategies have led to the privatization of weapons acquisition and the development of the modern research university to create a defensive brain trust among citizens. Policies aimed at supporting competitive American businesses—for example, in the biotech field—also affect the environment. This book is an important contribution to the history of capitalism, articulating how the president—by supporting policies that promote business growth in all sectors—has helped domestic companies expand internationally and added to a global image of the United States that is deeply intertwined with its leading corporations.
A look at local efforts to improve job training.
The history of unemployment and concepts surrounding it remain a mystery to many Americans. Frank Stricker believes we need to understand this essential thread in our shared past. American Unemployment is an introduction for everyone that takes aim at misinformation, willful deceptions, and popular myths to set the record straight: Workers do not normally choose to be unemployed. In our current system, persistent unemployment is not an aberration. It is much more common than full employment, and the outcome of elite policy choices. Labor surpluses propped up by flawed unemployment numbers have helped to keep real wages stagnant for more than forty years. Prior to the New Deal and the era of big government, laissez-faire policies repeatedly led to depressions with heavy, even catastrophic, job losses. Undercounting the unemployed sabotages the creation of government job programs that can lead to more high-paying jobs and full employment. Written for non-economists, American Unemployment is a history and primer on vital economic topics that also provides a roadmap to better jobs and economic security.
As Clinton left office there was little consensus even among Democrats as to the significance of his political legacy. He was keen to stress that enduring changes had been made to American society. Critics, however, were less convinced that Clintonism had developed an integrated vision of governance. This book examines whether the Clinton experience does illustrate the value of the New Democrat and Third Way agenda.
Even as the United States enjoys a booming economy and historically low levels of unemployment, millions of Americans remain out of work or underemployed, and joblessness continues to plague many urban communities, racial minorities, and people with little education. In Jobs for the Poor, Timothy Bartik calls for a dramatic shift in the way the United States confronts this problem. Today, most efforts to address this problem focus on ways to make workers more employable, such as job training and welfare reform. But Bartik argues that the United States should put more emphasis on ways to increase the interest of employers in creating jobs for the poor—or the labor demand side of the labor market. Bartik's bases his case for labor demand policies on a comprehensive review of the low-wage labor market. He examines the effectiveness of government interventions in the labor market, such as Welfare Reform, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Welfare-to-Work programs, and asks if having a job makes a person more employable. Bartik finds that public service employment and targeted employer wage subsidies can increase employment among the poor. In turn, job experience significantly increases the poor's long-run earnings by enhancing their skills and reputation with employers. And labor demand policies can avoid causing inflation or displacing other workers by targeting high-unemployment labor markets and persons who would otherwise be unemployed. Bartik concludes by proposing a large-scale labor demand program. One component of the program would give a tax credit to employers in areas of high unemployment. To provide disadvantaged workers with more targeted help, Bartik also recommends offering short-term subsidies to employers—particularly small businesses and nonprofit organizations—that hire people who otherwise would be unlikely to find jobs. With experience from subsidized jobs, the new workers should find it easier to obtain future year-round employment. Although these efforts would not catapult poor families into the middle class overnight, Bartik offers a powerful argument that having a full-time worker in every household would help improve the lives of millions. Jobs for the Poor makes a compelling case that full employment can be achieved if the country has the political will and adopts policies that address both sides of the labor market. Copublished with the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Economic Research
Stock market euphoria and blind faith in the post cold war economy have driven the topic of poverty from popular and scholarly discussion in the United States. At the same time the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. The New Poverty Studies critically examines the new war against the poor that has accompanied the rise of the New Economy in the past two decades, and details the myriad ways poor people have struggled against it. The essays collected here explore how global, national, and local structures of power produce poverty and affect the material well-being, social relations and politicization of the poor. In updating the 1960s encounter between ethnography and U.S. poverty, The New Poverty Studies highlights the ways poverty is constructed across multiple scales and multiple axes of difference. Questioning the common wisdom that poverty persists because of the pathology, social isolation and welfare state "dependency" of the poor, the contributors to The New Poverty Studies point instead to economic restructuring and neoliberal policy "reforms" which have caused increased social inequality and economic polarization in the U.S. Contributors include: Georges Fouron, Donna Goldstein, Judith Goode, Susan B. Hyatt, Catherine Kingfisher, Peter Kwong, Vin Lyon-Callo, Jeff Maskovsky, Sandi Morgen, Leith Mullings, Frances Fox Piven, Matthew Rubin, Nina Glick Schiller, Carol Stack, Jill Weigt, Eve Weinbaum, Brett Williams, and Patricia Zavella. "These contributions provide a dynamic understanding of poverty and immiseration" —North American Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 1, Nov. 2001
An epic account of how middle-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s, this wide-ranging cultural and political history rewrites the 1970s as the crucial, pivotal era of our time. Jefferson Cowie’s edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American musical, film, and TV lore—makes new sense of the 1970s as a crucial and poorly understood transition from New Deal America (with its large, optimistic middle class) to the widening economic inequalities, poverty, and dampened expectations of the 1980s and into the present. Stayin’ Alive takes us from the factory floors of Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, to the Washington of Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Cowie also connects politics to culture, showing how the big screen and the jukebox can help us understand how America turned away from the radicalism of the 1960s and toward the patriotic promise of Ronald Reagan. Cowie makes unexpected connections between the secrets of the Nixon White House and the failings of George McGovern campaign; radicalism and the blue-collar backlash; the earthy twang of Merle Haggard’s country music and the falsetto highs of Saturday Night Fever. Like Jeff Perlstein’s acclaimed Nixonland, Stayin’ Alive moves beyond conventional understandings of the period and brilliantly plumbs it for insights into our current way of life.
Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-provided retirement pensions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. Basing his work on the histories of these four tax expenditures, Howard highlights the distinctive characteristics of all such policies. Tax expenditures are created more routinely and quietly than traditional social programs, for instance, and over time generate unusual coalitions of support. They expand and contract without deliberate changes to individual programs. Howard helps the reader to appreciate the historic links between the hidden welfare state and U.S. tax policy, which accentuate the importance of Congress and political parties. He also focuses on the reasons why individuals, businesses, and public officials support tax expenditures. The Hidden Welfare State will appeal to anyone interested in the origins, development, and structure of the American welfare state. Students of public finance will gain new insights into the politics of taxation. And as policymakers increasingly promote tax expenditures to address social problems, the book offers some sobering lessons about how such programs work.