Rev Left Radio - Unemployment In America: Political Economy, Crisis, and Full Employment

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Frank Stricker is a professor emeritus of history, interdisciplinary studies, and labor studies at California State University. He is the author of "American Unemployment: Past, Present and Future" and is a member of the National Jobs for All Coalition/Network  Find more of Frank's work below: National Jobs For All Coalition OpEd News Links mentioned in the Intro: The Red Nation podcast Rev Left Radio Merch Guerrilla History ------ Please Support Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Music: 'Son of Sam' by Elliott Smith LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's show, we have Frank Stricker on to talk about American unemployment, past, present, and future. So we touch on some economic realities of unemployment, the way unemployment and the rhetoric around it's been used in American history, and then what full employment might be like and the obstacles we'd have to overcome to get to that level. particularly during this pandemic recession where so many millions and millions of people have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, I thought an episode focusing on unemployment would be important. But before we get into this wonderful episode with Frank, I did want to do some sort of house cleaning up front and promote some shows from my friends, talk about some other important

stuff that we just don't really get to talk about a lot on our public episodes. So I wanted to set a little time aside to do just that. So first and foremost, our friends over at the Red Nation podcast, their show is turning one years old, I think last week or the week before. So it's just a wonderful resource specifically for indigenous voices, which I think are essential. Nick Estes helps run it, and he was on our show on the History of Aim, for example. He's also obviously an author and just a wonderful historian and voice of indigenous history, indigenous self-determination efforts etc so if you haven't already definitely go check out a red nation and support them on patreon you know supporting indigenous voices and supporting a show like red nation

is incredibly important and i understand many people don't have the money right now and i don't think anybody blames you for that totally understandable if you do however if you find yourself in a relatively um okay position and can help support a show like uh like the red nation definitely do so that's uh patreon.com forward slash the Red Nation. Also shout out to Bands of Turtle Island. A Red Nation and Bands of Turtle Island that did a show recently. It was called the Indigenous People's Day Special and they focus on the 20-point program of the American Indian movement. So check that out if you haven't already. The other thing I wanted to mention was Rev Left merch. We got together with a small co-op,

which was partially co-founded by a previous guest on Rev Left. They reached out. They said they have this little shirt co-op and they wanted to do a collaboration with our podcast. And I helped make the design. It's actually, you know, the White House on fire. And in the smoke, you can see Rev Left Radio spelled out in the smoke over the White House. I thought it was a cool design. They absolutely killed it when they took the idea and turned it into an actual design for the shirts. And I just got mine in today. There was some problems at first with the shipping. I think there was an inundation of orders when they first released the Rev. Left shirt this summer, they had to quickly sort of streamline and navigate some obstacles they didn't foresee, and so that process of shipping

out those shirts, it took quite a while, but those shirts have come, and if you haven't gotten yours yet, they should be in shortly, and now they've teamed up with, like, backup printers, so if they face the same overload problem, they can address it much faster going forward and $2 from every shirt goes to directly support what we're doing here at Rev Left Radio and the rest goes to help this radical co-op get by, pay their bills, etc. So if you're at all interested in that, I'll link to that in the show notes of this episode and you can pick up your Rev Left shirt there. It's high quality design, really happy with the final product. It's not one of these super cheap shirts that you sometimes get that shrink seven sizes when you

put them through the dryer one time. So definitely check that out. Another announcement And this is actually kind of big. I was approached recently by history professor and leader of religious studies department from Queens University in Canada, Adnan Hussein, and immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, who was on our episode on The Science Behind COVID recently. And they came together and they asked me if I would be interested in co-hosting a show with them focused on basically proletarian revolutionary history. And I jumped at the chance.

So that new show is called Gorilla History. The Twitter and the Patreon have been set up, but we haven't released our episodes yet. We've recorded our intro episode and we've recorded our first ever episode with Vijay Prashad on his newest book, Washington Bullets, which covers the history of CIA, of coups and assassinations. It has a preface by Evo Morales. So that was a wonderful first episode to tackle. And I think it's different from Rev. Left. It's different from Red Menace. it's really a deep dive into history itself

with people from different backgrounds. So obviously Adnan is a Muslim professor of history with a focus on Middle Eastern history, medieval history, etc. Henry Hakamaki comes from this more scientific background, but still obviously a Marxist radical who has a really good grasp on history and then whatever I offer, I'm there as well. So between the three of us,

I think we have a really interesting new project, always with the goal of providing free content to the people to educate them. And in the same way that we focus on political theory over at Red Menace, we're going to focus on proletarian and revolutionary history over on guerrilla history. So that show hasn't dropped yet, but the first couple episodes have been recorded. And we're looking at the end of this year, beginning of next year, to launch maybe like the first three episodes all at once, so people can get a feel for the show and choose between a couple different topics.

So definitely check that out, and I'll link to that in the show notes as well. I'm very excited to start that new project. And then I also wanted to mention some of my friends have started shows. And, you know, it's hard to keep up with a left-wing podcast being produced these days. I know YouTube also has a growing left-wing presence. And I can't keep up with it all. But when some of my personal friends start these projects, I think it's my duty, really, to help amplify these smaller and newer voices on the podcasting

and YouTube being left and point people in their direction. So the Turn Leftist podcast has recently started up, and one of the host is a friend of mine who runs the Turn Leftist Instagram account, which is a really great political Marxist account on Instagram. And they started their own podcast. That's called Turn Leftist Podcast. I'll link to that in the show notes. And then another friend has started a podcast in the last couple months called This American Left,

which I'll also link to very. good content being put out by those comrades and I urge people not only to go and check out those shows but you know if you have the capability and the desire more voices on the left coming from different directions from different sets of experiences focusing on different things this can only be an important part in the overall advancement of the left we have to get our ideas our narratives and our content out to people you know we got to tell our own stories we have to tell our own history we have to highlight our own movements because corporate media even liberal media certainly not going to do it for us so the more voices the better

there's just more opportunities for people to find a way in to left-wing politics which is which is important and then of course thank you to everybody who supports us on our patreon at rev left in exchange for a few of your hard-earned dollars every month we give you bonus content and people seem to really like the stuff we put out on that front And I just wanted to say that, you know, this keeps my family's head above water. My wife lost her job as a server at the beginning of COVID. We just found out that she's pregnant, so we're going to have our third child. And this show and the people who support it mean the absolute world to us.

You have literally kept our heads above water during this time. You put food in my children's bellies. I can never, ever express the gratitude I have to every person. who supports us. Even a dollar a month means the world to us. And it really, really makes a direct material difference in my family's life. And Dave's family as well. He has two young daughters.

You know, they're impacted by this pandemic and recession like everybody else. And between the two of us, you're really keeping two entire families afloat. And we give away hundreds of dollars every month. I don't talk about it a lot because I think that you should do good things and support good people without needing praise. but it is worth reminding the people that support the show that every month I'm looking for people who need money to give them money that can go to on-the-ground organizations

doing amazing work I've helped trans people and women of color by self-defense weapons with the rise of insurgent fascism people that are on the marginalized ends of our society certainly need to be able to defend themselves so our Revlect patrons have gone to that

we've helped people pay their bills get through, you know, pay their rent when they've lost their job, etc. So every month I'm looking at different people or organizations to give money to and help people get by. So beyond supporting the show, beyond keeping both me and Dave's family afloat, hundreds of dollars every month from our Patreon also goes to support people and organizations on the ground trying to get by in these very desperate times. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much to everybody who does that.

And if you can't afford some money to support people on Patreon, I totally understand it. We're living in a huge economic recession right now. So just sharing our content, helping spread the word about our content, giving us a good review. These are all things that you can do that cost you nothing, but actually really do help the spread of the show. And importantly, the ideas behind it. So love and solidarity to everybody that supports the show. Now, without further ado, let's get into this wonderful conversation with Frank Strict. on American Unemployment, Past, Present, and Future. Enjoy.

I'm Frank Stricker, and I'm the author of a new book called American Unemployment, past, present, and future. And that's mostly what we're going to talk about today. By the way, you can get the book at the University of Illinois Press. You can get it elsewhere, too, at other sites, one of which I'd rather not mention, even though I use it a lot. So, who am I? I'm a retired professor of history, labor studies, some other, some other departments at California State University, Dominguez Hills. That's about 10 miles south of Los Angeles in a city called Carson. It's a pretty working, was a pretty working class campus.

It still is, heavily minority. So I like working there. I was active in my union, California Faculty Association, which is the union for the whole system. And that was very good for me personally. It was a good experience for me. And it was good, I hope, for my fellow members. So before this book, I've written one book, Why We Lost the War on Poverty and How to Win It.

And that was in 2007, history of poverty and policy from 1945 to what was the present then, very early 2000s. That included a lot of stuff about jobs. And I got more interested in unemployment because that was one of the causes of poverty and one of the things that I didn't think was properly addressed in the war on poverty and other efforts. In the process of that of selling that book, I met people in an organization called the National Jobs for All Coalition, and one of them said I should join the organization, and I did. So I'm a part of that group. We have a newsletter.

We have, I'll explain later, our own count of unemployment, we support each other. So I'm very happy that I'm in that group. I've learned a lot. And you can find some of my articles there, too, which I'll tell you about later. Absolutely. Well, it's an absolute honor to have you on the show, specifically with regards to what's happening right now and this, not only this historic pandemic and the subsequent recession, but also the fact that this is the most unequal recession in American history from all counts.

The poor and the working class are suffering a lot, while the rich and the very rich at least seem to only be getting richer. So this is a perfect time to have you on to talk about this. Yeah, people in the top quarter of the incomes have regained their employment levels before the pandemic. And that is not true of all the other groups of workers. It's pretty sad. Yeah, it's absolutely tragic. Before we get into questions about this wonderful book, I just kind of curious, you know, I know that you've obviously been a longtime studier of history and you're affiliated with some progressive organizations.

You've also, I think in the book, mentioned some of your engagement with Marxists in the past. So how do you identify politically at this moment? Well, right now, I'm certainly still interested in Marxist models and things, but I'm not, I don't have deep knowledge of Marxism. But some of the groups that I was in in the 70s and 80s helped me learn a little more about Marx. And I needed it. But now I identify as a social Democrat. I'd be happy with a really thorough new, new deal. And I hope we get just some of that under Biden.

It's going to be a real struggle. So let's go ahead because we have a lot to cover, and we'll definitely touch on the New Deal in this conversation as well. But first and foremost, you know, for those that may not be familiar with many concepts and economics, can you just sort of tell us what the unemployment rate really means, what it does and doesn't include, and sort of why it's been such a rhetorical,

cornerstone of American politics. Yeah. Let me just add one more thing about the book in a nutshell. The essential thesis of the whole book is that at least since the 1870s, we've always, almost always had too much unemployment. Excessive unemployment, that's the phrase in the theme. So the official unemployment rate that we have now, we didn't get until 1940. So it took a long time after industrialization really picked up in the 1870s.

a little earlier. It took a long time for us to get an adequate count. It was important to get one. Before that, we didn't really know how much unemployment there was. Even in the early 30s, the Great Depression, we weren't sure the government wasn't sure, lots of debate, some fiascos under Hoover about fake numbers and everything. So it's really important that we got it. It's important for policy to know, have at least a general idea of how many people are unemployed. I think, it also may help, I'm not sure about this, but it may help people to think more objectively about unemployment and as a sort of systemic thing rather than an individual fault, which was an extremely dominant view in the late 1800s and on into the early 1900s. The focus

too much, too often was on people's laziness, lack of skills, something wrong with the people always. I think the achievement of the official unemployment rate in 1940 was important and part of the whole New Deal shift toward a more realistic and humane view of unemployed people and of things that needed to be done. So already in the 60s, people were starting to wonder if the official rate really counted all the unemployed. And it was happening actually in the labor department. Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz commissioned a study of unemployment in the, I think they call it the slums, poor areas of American cities. And they added to the regular unemployed, which I'll talk about in just a second, people who weren't normally counted because they stopped looking for work, discouraged workers, things like that, and so on and so forth. And they found horrendously high true unemployment rates.

After that, the next effort to revise the unemployment rates was in the 70s, 73, 74, 75. A lot of liberals and lefties were saying that the official unemployment rate didn't count enough of the unemployed people. So the federal number, what it does is there's a survey, a person-to-person survey. Most of it's on the phone or on computers nowadays, but at one time people actually went out to the homes. And they still do, I think, for the first time a person's in the survey. Anyway, so they survey a sample of people. And the basic question is really simple. Do you have a job?

No. Do you want a job? Yes. Have you looked for a job? Yes. Then you're unemployed. They don't ask people, do you feel you're unemployed? Do you think you're unemployed?

I think they call it the activity question. So if you want a job, don't have one. and you've searched for one in the last four weeks, you are considered unemployed. And they've stuck by that. That is the rock upon which the unemployment rate has been built, and they don't want to tear it down. They've made some revisions, which I'll mention in a minute.

But in the 70s, that didn't look right. That didn't look like enough people. One of the groups that they don't count is discouraged workers, people who stop looking. So if you're not looking, you can't be counted. So if you're so discouraged about getting a job that you aren't unemployed, in fact, in my view, they do count the discouraged, but I think they're way undercount them. I don't know how they come up with some of these things, you know, like in a great recession, a million workers were discouraged, so discouraged, they stopped looking for work. It seems like an underestimation.

Right. But anyway, so a lot of people thought we should count more people, even if they hadn't looked for jobs. in the last four weeks or even in the last year if they really wanted to work. And so eventually, the Labor Department itself constructed a bunch of alternative unemployment rates, and one of them, which turned out to be called U6, ads, part-timers who want full-time work, and other people who haven't looked recently, but have looked in the last year and are ready to work. And so they have their own alternative unemployment rates, often about twice.

high. See if I got the numbers here for you. Well, September of 2020 last month, official rate was 7.9%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics amplified rate was 12.8. So it was quite high. The group that I belong to, the national jobs for all coalition, does almost the same thing, but we're a little more loose on the people who we say want a job, haven't looked. So we include part-timers who want full-time work, and then we include everybody who says they want to work, even if they haven't looked lately for a job. So last month, when the official rate was 7.9, our rate was 15.6%. I think the official rate was an important historic event. I wish that the Bureau of Labor Statistics would change its official rate. It's

very unlikely they'll do it. They don't want to. It's what they started with, and it works for them, and they think it's accurate, of course. If you were president of the United States, you probably would not be pushing for it. You wouldn't want the unemployment rate to go up 100%, even if it was just a statistical thing. So it's probably not going to happen, but it's good that we have these alternatives. And you can find the Alternative Bureau of Labor Statistics rate every month in the back of the employment situation report, you know, the one that we get our unemployment rates from, it's back there in Table A15, I think, and you can go to national jobs for all coalition, and we have what we call a full count, so you can get the alternatives. Yeah. And I think it's good

if you do. Absolutely. So, yes, so some things that it definitely doesn't include, it doesn't include like the under-employed, right? So those that are looking for full-time work, but don't get it, only can get part-time jobs, et cetera. No, regular unemployment rate doesn't. They, they're alternative rate includes those people. Yeah. I see. And then also the the original unemployment rate doesn't include, as you said, those that have been so disparaged and so unable to find a job that they've altogether stopped looking. And of course, these lower rates, as you say, are good for a president or any politician that wants to get reelected if you can artificially suppress those numbers. And I also think, and correct me if you think I'm wrong here, that lower rates overall also make it

easier for the conservative argument against social programs that include stuff like the unemployment insurance. So if you can have an artificially low unemployment rate, it's maybe easier to push some of those, oh, they're lazy, pull yourself up by your bootstraps rhetoric, and, you know, discard or make it much harder for people to get access to basic unemployment insurance. I think it does. Yeah, and it stands in the way of what I want is some federal job programs, and especially in so-called good times, I think. think we still need them. I can talk about that later, too. Yeah, I think you're right. Of course, the right-wing Republicans, even in the midst of the Great Recession, you know, two years in,

they were complaining about people sitting at home taking drugs, so we don't want to give them money. Some people are incorrigible. Absolutely. So in your book, and one of the things I like about it, is you do a deep yet accessible dive into the history of unemployment in this country. and I understand it's impossible to rehash all the details here, but I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the New Deal and what its effects on society was in regards to unemployment overall. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you go back, I think, in the notes you sent me,

you talked about going behind the New Deal before the New Deal. And yeah, let me just talk a little bit about the laissez-faire utopia from the 1870s to 1933, basically. basically. This is what I think right-wing Republicans would like to go back to, probably a lot of business people, too. Almost no regulations of business at all. There were a few Food and Drug Act came in and so on. No labor regulations. It was so hard to get minimum wage things and hours legislation. Much of it was struck down by the Supreme Court, other courts. And also, the economy really wasn't that good from the 18, to 1933, some good times. And I guess it was better being in the United States than being Jewish in Russia and being beaten up by anti-Semites. It was better than dying in famines in Ireland and Germany and so on. But the statistics aren't all that good. We had about six big depressions from 1870s to 1929, about 10 other small ones. And in between, there was a lot of

unemployment, a lot of unemployment. It wasn't really a utopia for workers except by comparison to something worse. Just a lot of unemployment and labor turnover in everyday life. And also the attitudes of influential people, many of them, politicians, religious leaders, economists. Economics was for the most, but just terrible. There were plenty of liberals and radicals, but 95% of the profession were their ideas were just awful, partly because, you know, mainstream classical economics was built in a sense as a justification for capitalism.

So it's a really unpleasant period for me to study, especially the late 19th, early 20th century, with big depressions and no help for people, and hostility in the press and minister, and charity workers whose goal was not to help people, but to pick on them and control them. So that's the kind of mean-spirited culture we lived in, much worse than today, much worse than today.

So I think the New Deal was a real sharp departure. It wasn't socialism. It wasn't all we want. A lot of the programs were misconceived or too limited, including the unemployment insurance program probably. But in terms of help for people, it was a sharp turn to the left or the liberal side. So that after the New Deal, there was less hostility to poor people. There was still plenty, but less hostility to poor people, more sympathy for them.

We did have unemployment insurance. We had the beginnings of responsibility to federal government to do something to turn the economy around when it wasn't depression. Oh, and we had an unemployment rate. we could argue about. So I think there was a kind of value change in the 30s because of the severity of the Depression, the organizing by radical groups, disruptions by people, the unemployed labor, and a bunch of responsive liberal officeholders, people in Roosevelt's administration. And probably among the top two were Harry Hopkins, who was kind of like their welfare king, the job king, and Francis Perkin, who was a labor secretary.

They were pretty liberal, and one of the things they did was struggle to teach people not to pick on the poor and the unemployed, and I think they did pretty well. So I think it was, for me, it was a very positive change because you look at the preceding period of 60, 70 years from the 1870s to 1929. We have nothing, no unemployment insurance, no social security, no real concept of fighting depressions, real hostility to poor people. saw it. So to me, it's a big, big, good change. It's not enough. It's limited. But I'm happy to support the new deal. And I wish we could have a new new deal that was even better. That's going to be a tough one. Absolutely. And there is this pattern in American history where, you know, moments of progressive reformation and restoration are preceded by, you know, many decades of depravity and darkness. So, you know, the optimist and some folks might think that perhaps we're on the

the edge of a new dawn or, you know, the alternative is just as easily true that we're going to go in for a protracted period of decline in social unrest. It's still yet to be said. One of the things about the New Deal for all of its wonderful benefits, there was also almost by necessity given how the system works, a compromise with the South and that people that were non-white, specifically black people, were not always necessarily let in on the advantages that the New Deal offered to people. Is that true and fair in your view? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that domestic labor and farm labor were left out of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set overtime and minimum wage standards. Let's see. I think they were left out of unemployment insurance. And some of that

was changed in the 60s, I believe. Yes, yeah, definitely. And part, I mean, part of the reason was the power of the racist wing of the Democratic Party in Congress, and Roosevelt collapsed before that to get something for other people. He wouldn't even support an anti-lynching bill, which seems like kind of a basic thing. But yeah, you're absolutely right about that. It was very limited, and elements of it were real racist, structurally racist. Yeah. And after several decades of, I mean, the New Deal, and then you had the great society under Lyndon B. Johnson, you had the post-war economic boom overall. But then in the 70s, we hit another recession, and you get the rise of Reaganomics and the period that we now call in hindsight

neoliberalism, which in some ways rolled back some of those advancements put forward by the new deal and policies like it in the subsequent decades. Yeah, and it kind of was a reversal possibilities. So we tried the war on poverty. It wasn't enough. There were some good things that came out of it. We started to try job programs, but, you know, like CETA. You probably heard of CETA, which we had in the 70s, which was just lambasted like crazy by the right. So we began to try those kind of things. We tried to get a real federal job bill called Humphrey Hawkins, but it was pretty much gutted by the time they passed it. So yeah, there's a tremendous reaction. So we as a society couldn't go on to better ways of handling unemployment and and chronic joblessness and

so on. And part of it was the capitalist and conservatives really organized fiercely in beginning in the early 70s. They already were, but they just up the ante terribly, created a lot of so-called think tanks, put a lot of money toward right-wing ideas and so on, and we're seeing a lot of the results still today. And the other thing I think that really hurt was the surge of inflation in the 70s, which gave conservatives something to complain about and blame on liberalism and big spending and so on, made it very difficult to talk about Keynesian deficit spending to pump up the economy. I mean, they linked deficits with inflation.

Of course, they created their own deficits. They always do. They just did again in 2017 giant deficits through that tax cut that was totally useless. And Reagan's tax cuts created massive deficits, but he's out there lambasting the Democrats for creating deficits. I mean, it just made such a muddle of thinking about deficits. And the two causes to me were the conservative organization and inflation. And the conservative organization helped to push the Democratic Party to the right, too. Democratic Leadership Council in the 80s was kind of devoted to making the party more conservative.

And Bill Clinton was one result. Yep. Absolutely. That's an important essential aspects of American history to grapple with and understand. And, of course, that pattern of right-wing conservatives harping on the deficit and the debt when there's a Democrat in the office, but then going silent on those matters, anytime there's a conservative. in the White House is funny to point out, I mean, both Bush with his wars and Trump with his massive tax cuts for the rich do nothing to bring down any debt or deficit, regardless of the weak points of that approach to economics generally. But we never hear anything about it.

But if Biden wins, expect to hear talk about the debt and deficit nonstop from the right. That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. There was an article in the New York Times front page today that suggested that maybe the deficit issue was over. And it would be hard for the Republicans, but the Republican Party has made a business out of opposing anything good if it's done by the Democrats. I mean, they fought Obama tooth and nail during the Great Recession on stimulus and job programs and everything. I mean, they obstructed, they ridicule. And this was one in the country was on the precipice possibly of a great depression or a worse depression than a Great Recession, totally irresponsible. Both parties are bad, and they all lie.

There's one party that lies more and that is really immoral and might really immoral. Absolutely. Without a doubt. So let's go ahead because you mentioned the Great Recession and, you know, we cover a lot of history in a short period of time. But coming up to the Great Recession, which everybody listening has experienced firsthand, can you just talk about that recession and its economic fallout with regards to these issues? Well, I think to go back to something we just said, it would have been great to have much more stimulus. But Republican opposition and also kind of neoliberal influences within the administration short-circuited that. I think the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Romer wanted a much bigger stimulus plan.

But Larry Summer simply cut her proposal in half, which means there wasn't enough stimulus in the original one. It was big, and it had a lot of good things going on. But it wasn't big enough. And then after that, Obama had to fight for any kind of stimulus. So we basically, the most that we got was people were allowed for a couple months or not to pay their Social Security taxes. That was like a big stimulus after the original one. And there were a couple of other little things.

But he would have done more if it weren't for conservatives and also a couple of neoliberals in his own administration. And by the way, on deposition, within like two years, people in his administration and are starting to worry about the damn deficit. The country's going down to drain, and some of these people are thinking we can't spend. And he even joins in OB does and appoints a committee to examine the deficit, which is the most ridiculous thing you never,

unless he did it as a way to deflate the opposition. But I think he might have really believed it. Anyway, yeah, it took us so long to get out of that recession. And part of it was there wasn't enough stimulus, $750 billion, I think, to cover two years. years. Now, just a few months ago, we had the CARES Act, which was two, three trillion, much more, much more. So, yeah, we never, it took us so long to really get out of it. And we were pretty close at the end of Obie. And then progress continued under the next president.

His name is Trump. And he took credit for everything. He gave no credit for what Obama did. but yeah so neoliberalism plus conservatism limited the recovery and there wasn't any discussion after the first stimulus bill of actually creating a job programs big job programs government job programs and so on which is what i would have liked and i still want i don't know does that help start us on that discussion yeah i mean absolutely and you know the legacy of that recession continues to live on in people's, not only their economic precarity, the gig economy, et cetera, but in just the massive income inequality in this country, because those things were not addressed in a meaningful way that helped the worst off, but in a lot of ways

bailed out big banks and big business. And as you said, pushed forward a neo-dogmatic neoliberal agenda. The income inequality rate ballooned. And we're seeing that same process happening again And with this recession, I was thinking, you know, sort of naively as this recession took hold and the first stimulus package got pushed through, I was thinking, well, since the Democrats aren't in office, perhaps the Republicans will be more likely to spend on stimulus. And that first round, they sure seemed to. But since then, things have calmed down a little bit with regards to just the immediacy of the problem like it was in spring. Now we have Republicans refusing to do it at all. So what do you make of that? What's their game right now?

Because it would stand to reason, at least on the surface, that it would help Republicans and Donald Trump if they passed another huge stimulus bill, you know? I agree. I agree. I think, well, first of all, there is a little coterie, I don't know how big it is, of people who are of senators who are worried about the deficit. You know, our deficit they're worried about.

And the other thing is that other theory that seems to make sense is that McConnell has already decided that Trump is not going to win, and he wants to make things as hard as possible for Biden when Biden comes in. So to make the economy, you know, messed up more than it would be if we had a second big round of stimulus. So Biden could be facing a really dire situation. And, of course, they'll jump all over him for something that they help to cause. But that's the one kind of Machiavellian interpretation that seems to make sense

to me. He has no concern about people going without, you know, food or getting kicked out of their homes. And so he's pretty, very, very cynical, immoral politician. Most of them are. You have to be a little bit. But he's, he's the worst. He's the worst. Are you talking about McConnell or Trump specifically? McConnell. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I think McConnell is, I think Trump would go along with stuff. He's too ignorant and too lacking in adeptness to actually organize himself to push for a

stimulus, which I think would help him a lot. I think it would help his election. And it might show that he can provide some leadership. But he doesn't have it in him in that respect. But yeah, McConnell. McConnell is shrewd. He knows about what's going on and he doesn't want

to make things easy on the Democrats when they come into power, which I hope they do in January. Yeah, McConnell is absolutely a vampire of the worst kind. And I like what you said, too, about a segment of the Republican political institution of the GOP that sees a Trump defeat as being probable. And they want to recoil to like a pre-Trump free market Republican Party. And so getting ahead of the game and refusing a extra round of stimulus will be their fiscal conservative bona fides that they can present to their constituents. We'll see if that gamble turns out because even a lot of their own base is being devastated by this recession.

That's true. Yeah, it's true. Devestated by the recession and by the plague too, yeah. I was just wondering, because there's this new sort of fad on the liberal left, really, and it's getting more steam behind it. And that's this idea of MMT or modern monetary theory. I know I didn't put that in the questions to discuss. And I know that you're not necessarily an economist. but I was wondering if you had any thoughts on MMT broadly and what your views on that is. Good one. That's a good one. Yeah, I do a little bit, a little bit. I got the book. It's called The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. And I've started reading it. And I think I believed it even before reading the book. I've never had a problem with deficits, you know, unless the spending

really does create runaway inflation. But it's not clear that it usually does. It may. It may. Maybe in the late 60s it contributed to it. But, yeah, I think Biden needs to get in contact with some of these people. I don't know how we get them to get in contact with some of these people in the MMT movement, including this author, Stephanie Kelton, so that they don't get blindsided or blindside themselves about deficits. If we're going to have these big programs, we're going to have job programs, we're going to have Green New Deal and all this and all this. Big, big money. They need some intellectual weapons, and I'm not the one to supply them. I'm not an economist. I know what I felt. I'm always for deficits unless we're sure that it's going to cause a lot of inflation. I never had a problem with it, but a lot of people have. So they should get this book or have her come in and give them a talk. That's what I would wish. And there are some devils within the administration. One of them is Larry Summers. He may turn out pretty conservative.

And then there's an advisor named Ted Kaufman, I think, who not too long ago said, we got to worry about the deficit. This is an advisor to Biden. We got to worry about the deficit. What the hell, you guys? So yes, absolutely. These MMT people are economists. They're smart.

They have credentials and authority. And they need somehow to be hooked up with some of the bozos in the Biden group. Yeah, absolutely. And just for those that might not have ever heard of MMT, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic idea, as you said and alluded to, is that deficit spending in and of itself is not bad. Correct. The connection between deficit spending and the direct hard connection to inflation doesn't seem to really hold up to any probing. And by deficit spending in ways that help normal people and that build big programs, you can actually grow the economy over the long term to sort of make up for it, right? absolutely yeah what it's okay to have deficits for that stupid 2017 tax cut which gave rich people

more money they already have all the damn money right had to give them more money and the stimulative effects of that were pretty minor and the same thing with bush's tax cuts in what was it 2001 and three or three and five well there are two of them anyway more deficits they'd probably help the economy a little bit but considering the cost and a huge amount of money that was again given to the rich they didn't so yes deficits according to stepany counten in this book so far as i've got the main question is is the deficit spending causing us to um over demand on various resources like labor and you know materials and so on and so forth if that's the case then there might be some inflation but if that's not the case deficits aren't necessarily inflationary and

we've had a lot of them without much inflation. Hey, how about the last 20 years? Right. A little inflation, some pretty big deficits. So, yeah, I think it would be a good thing for those people to try to get some influence. Right. And particularly when it comes to big programs that, you know, regardless of where you fall on the left, you think are good, like a big jobs program, a big, a climate change bill, health care, universal health care, et cetera, all these things depend on huge spending and even some deficits so if we can make this argument more broadly gives you some intellectual and economic ammunition to push forward on these projects. Absolutely. And the alternative we can tell our friends on the right, right, right is,

well, okay, let's tax the rich people a little more. Hey, huh? We haven't, they've gotten away with murder in the last, well, most of the time, especially in the last 20 years. Absolutely. And that brings me to my next question, which is, you know, this pandemic has forced tens of millions of Americans to lose their jobs, many of which are just simply never coming back. And at the same time, huge corporations seem to be doing very well and are looking to consolidate their already disproportionate wealth and power when the smoke clears. So can you talk a little bit about the unemployment crisis right now as you see it and what its effects are on the economy and society as we move out of this recession over the next several years? Yeah, well, I don't see how we can have a full

recovery if we don't have more people back at work. I think the job recovery is is tailing off somewhat. And some of the experts, one in particular from Moody's analysis group, which I'm pretty sure is not left wing, has said that unless we get a big stimulus, the next year will be, will basically be in a stagnant economy. We won't be growing anymore. So yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I, think there's so many reasons from my point of view for us to have some kind of group of federal job programs. And one of them is many jobs are not coming back. Another is we never have full employment anyway, even when the official right says we do. Another is I think we need more employers, namely the federal government, that are unambiguously devoted to good pay and

benefits for workers. I think we need an employer or supervisor unambiguously devoted to affirmative action for minorities, women, all the other groups, plus people who are long-term unemployed. Employers like to discriminate against them. So I think there's just a ton of reasons. Oh, here's another one. We have a bunch of left behind communities in America that kind of ignored. Some are in the center or near the center of cities like Chicago. Some are in rural areas around the nation that are really declining and have a lot of people who aren't employed, a lot of opioid addiction and so on and so forth. We need a policy of some kind to figure out if we can help these areas. And I sure as hell don't think the capitalist and

philanthropists can do it. We have to. programs for them, and I don't know, half the time they end up investing in, you know, upper middle class apartment buildings somewhere in a city instead of adding jobs in poor areas. So I think we need to address the left behind areas. I think the final reason why we need a big federal jobs for us, there's just so many jobs that need doing that aren't going to get done. Infrastructure is one. Physical infrastructure is one. Trump talked about it. Supposedly some Republicans like it, but nothing got done. Our infrastructure, I got a D plus the last time from the engineers.

So I just think there's so many reasons. Oh, here's one last one, and then I'll shut up about this topic. People are always talking about automation, going to kill jobs, robots going to kill jobs. Well, what if they do? If we had some ongoing federal job programs, we'd be ready for it or more ready than we are now. Yeah, no, I like all of that, and it's all incredibly important. And I also like you pointing out how Trump ran on this idea of infrastructure, a big infrastructure bill, and it just never come to fruition, not even close.

So let's talk about a full employment. What exactly is it? I know it might seem obvious, but it might be a little more nuanced. What is full employment? Why is it never really pursued? And who would benefit from full employee? Like, what would it actually look like if we implemented some full employment policy in the U.S.? The easy part is to give you a definition.

And then to discuss why we never seem to get it. I think full employment is in general when everyone who wants a job at a decent rate of pay can get a job. So how will we measure? I know how we can get. We're not going to get it without federal jobs programs, and that's for sure. But how can we tell that we've gotten there? Well, I think there are two ways to guarantee full. One is a job guarantee that says if you can't find a job, we'll get you on,

Some kind of public sector or non-profit organization will subsidize a job for you somehow. I mean, this can be figured out. So a job guarantee would sort of by definition mean full employment. Almost everybody would have a job except people who are, you know, still looking and so on. But they're on the way to it. And the other way is to get some kind of target unemployment rate that really is full employment. And I think one that a friend of mine put out is 2% unemployment. If we really got down to 2% unemployment, probably there wouldn't be that many people hidden unemployed.

It would be a really red-hot economy if we got that. So I think that might be another way to go. I think the only time we got there for a couple of years was World War II. Other than that, we've gotten into the threes, but not into the twos as far as I know. So full employment is when everybody who wants a job at a decent rate of pay, this is my definition, can get a job. And I gave you two ways to sort of define it. One is federal government says, if you can't find a job, we'll find one for you. And the other is we'll get the unemployment rate down to 2%.

Does that help a little bit? Absolutely. Yeah. And do you want to talk about why it's just not really pursued, like who would benefit and who would lose from such a policy? Yeah, I think we're not going to get it just by the Federal Reserve making interest rates lower. They're already pretty damn low. Are they zero or I don't know? Close to zero, yeah.

Yeah. And the chair of the Federal Reserve seems to be more flexible than some past chairs. I mean, he says he's giving priority to as much priority to employment as to inflation. And, of course, he has the luxury of not worrying about inflation because it's not very high. But anyway, I don't think they can get full employment without some kind of big jobs program. In February of 2020, before the pandemic, the official rate was 3.5, but there were 10 million unemployed, if you count the hidden unemployed. And then 5 million part-timers who wanted full-time work. So that's 15 million people who are unemployed in one way or now.

That's about a 10% rate of unemployment. So normally we only add, and you know, a good time, maybe two million jobs a year. And we're talking about cutting into 15 minutes. So I don't think the normal processes can do it. So we need some job programs and who would oppose them? With the mass of the people oppose them, a lot of surveys say no. I mean, once we get going with it and the Republicans rev up, the opposition will build to some of it. and they'll talk about the deficits and they'll talk about the expense

and how you can't coddle people, so on. But I think there's some support. There's usually support for infrastructure programs. Union supports some programs. Not all of them. I'm not sure why. I didn't investigate that. Republicans, no, for the most part, no.

Some are supposed to support infrastructure, but I haven't seen much of it later. But in general, they'll be against these programs, a job program. They'll call them socialists, communists, et cetera, et cetera, all the bad stuff. Some really, really right-wing people in the Republican Party now, the sort of Tea Party Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows group, pretty bad people. So they'll go after it, and especially if a Democrat proposes it. By definition, they have to go after it as evil.

and then Democrats some will support some more need to I think it will depend on how big the progressive group in the country is and how much disruption and demonstration and how many progressives there are in Congress and so on maybe Biden could be convinced that if he doesn't do something big there's going to be a swing back in 2022 and he will won't get reelected in 2004. I don't know if he wants to be. He's going to have to do something big to help a lot of people, I think. And then there's one last group that is generally going to be opposed to such programs, and that's businesses. They kind of like full employment because some of them do who sell to the public. They like a lot of customers. But a lot of businesses won't like full employment because it will drive wages up. It will drive the obstinacy of the workforce up. People will get more competent. They'll expect more from their employers.

So I think that's one reason. They won't like it if rich people and businesses have to pay higher taxes to support work programs. And they probably won't like it that having federal job programs shows that capitalism can't supply enough good jobs. I don't think they like that kind of a picture, that drama. There are probably other reasons, but I think mostly businesses will oppose it. Republicans will oppose it.

some Democrats will be for it, and we need to get more of them to be for it. Right. Yeah, no, I agree with all of that, and I also agree that Biden really has to do something big or we're going right back to fascism. That's what fascism. The breeding ground of fascism is, you know, neoliberal's Democrats aiding and abetting this rabid gap in income inequality. Nothing ever changes. None of our problems get solved. That makes more and more people susceptible to fascist, propaganda, conspiracy theories, et cetera. Yeah, let's talk about one problem that hasn't gotten solid either. And you couldn't get the neoliberal souls of Obama and Hillary to go very far.

And that's the minimum wage. It's pathetic. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Criminal. It's just a disgrace. It's so obscene. But I can't remember what Obie said. He said he would go, finally he'd go along with, I don't know,

876 or something and Hillary during the campaign finally went for I think 12 yeah 12 dollars yeah 12 this is in the midst of we have a move it the 15 dollar move it's going on and pushing and doing a good job so that's the most she would go for so that we have to that has to be fixed if we have a federal job program we have to have decent wages but we have to get the minimum wage up It's just pathetic. You probably know this in some states. They can pay people in tip occupations, $2.13 an hour, and the employer is supposed to make up the rest of it.

You know about that one? Oh, yeah. Yeah, my wife was a server until she lost her job due to COVID, so we know that very well. Wow. That's a disgrace. Anyway, we have to do something about the minimum wage thing. If we had a federal jobs program,

that program could guarantee higher wages. And if that meant, too, that fewer people were unemployed and desperate for work, that would help lift wages, too, even without federal minimum wage legislation. That's one of the reasons, I think, and there are a lot of them, one of the reasons that wages haven't grown very fast in the past, well, basically 40 years, is that we've had too much unemployment. There are many other reasons. Unions being decimated, jobs being exported, shareholders pressing for companies to keep wages down. But one other one I think is almost all the time there are plenty of workers for the jobs.

We almost never have real labor shortages. So the employers don't have as much incentive to really jack up wages. So that would be another reason to get full employment somehow or another to help lift wages up. Yeah. And just I just want to add.

my two cents here. We have listeners all across the spectrum of the left, including those that are suspicious of the system itself and are really, you know, really want revolutionary a change. And what I would say to that is what full employment would allow for is the boot off the neck of labor just a little bit. As Frank alluded to, when you have full employment, individual workers can take less shit from their bosses. They're operating more from a position of strength. They can choose not to work in bad conditions or choose not to work for those low wages, et cetera. There's less overall precarity in the economy. And also I think it often gets overlooked, but specifically when we're looking down the barrel of this historical mental health

crisis we're going through right now, good employment where you can provide for your family and have a career that actually puts food on the table and you don't have to live in a constant state of precarity is good for the psychological well-being and the self-esteem of the working class as a whole. Yeah, good jobs, yeah, decent pay. What the hell? Yeah, exactly. We don't have that in this country.

Mr. Patriotic, who's in the White House right now, he never mentions the minimum weight, loves the American worker, loves the white workers anyway. Never talks about the minimum wage, and it's an utter disgrace. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely. And the other thing, as you mentioned, just to sort of wrap up, is the two things that jobs programs could really be aimed at is not only infrastructure, but also the transformation of our energy grid to renewable energies. Those are two things, infrastructure and the energy grid updating,

which are kind of combined and overlap that we could absolutely, we desperately need work on and could absolutely be the focal point of any big jobs program. Totally and absolutely. Yeah, it's just a disgrace that the current administration has basically kissed off on controlling and reducing fossil fuels. It's just unbelievable. The kind of blind immorality of it is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And there's just so many other things. I mean, we could expand head to start. We could build more buses, get more cars off the road. They had a program, and under Obama, which was a good weatherization assistance program for low-income people to insulate their homes and make up cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

There's so many things we can do. There's, you know, thousands of different jobs that aren't being done and could be done. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Frank, I really appreciate you coming on. The book is American Unemployment, Past, Present, and Future.

We could only touch on some of the topics covered in this book, but for those who really want to get a good understanding of the history, particularly to understand the present, This book is really a valuable, valuable resource. Before I let you go, though, Frank, can you, if you have any last words, let us know what they are and then let listeners know

where they can find you and your work online? Yes, I appreciate that. Yeah. So one place where kind of writes something every month, njfac.org, national jobs for all coalition. And we have a blog type thing, and it's called Good Jobs News. And I contribute something every month.

I mean, last month it was about the truth about mining and manufacturing jobs. You know, of course, Trump has brought them all the way back to heaven. But it's a little more complicated. And the month before, it was about Uber and Lyft. So that's a good one. The other one is op-ed news, O-E-N. I usually put something in there every month. There's something in there this month about some right-wing jerk.

complaining that people don't want to go to work because of this and that. And I mentioned there's kind of a job shortage in the country. So anyway, op-head news is good. There's one article on Zocalo Public Square site in September about the creation of the unemployment rate. That's interesting. And then I used to have a lot of things in Counterpunch, but I think they fired me. Not sure why.

I think I should file for unemployment insurance. I think I'm not radical enough, probably. Do you know that magazine? Yeah, yeah, I'm unfamiliar with it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, just to mention, yeah, we're having a big struggle out here over Uber and Lyft. And the companies are spending $200 million to keep not having to call their workers' employees. And that's Proposition 22.

So that's their proposition. So I hope it's defeated. So on election day, you might see how we work down on that. We're trying to fight that off. They want to keep them as independent contractors. They're going to give them a little higher wage, a little medical benefits, but that's it. That's an example, I think, over and a lift, of the kind of crappy jobs people have to take

because they can't find anything else or the job they have. The other job they have is stinky. So you get people who have to take those jobs, which are really low pay after you figure all the cost and everything in. Anyway, that's my statement on Proposition 22. So vote no on Prop 22 if you're in that state. Help out the workers. Vote no. Yeah, vote no twice if you can. Perfect. Frank, thank you so much for coming on. I'll link to as much of that in the show notes as possible so people can find it easier and keep up the good work. the balls off

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