We face potential unemployment on par with the Great Depression. We need a mass employment program to get through it. AI can pay for it. An AI tax should target the companies that stand to make billions of dollars by laying people off.
My grandfather (a 1917 Norwegian immigrant) frequently and proudly described himself as a socialist. When I asked him what he meant, he always pointed me to FDR, the New Deal, and his proposed Second Bill of Rights. And here we are again.
Democratic decline and inequality are not inevitable. But if restoring broad prosperity and social stability are the goals, they may require revisiting the New Deal-style policies.
Frances Perkins’s work to build FDR’s New Deal sparked the modern American state. She recognized that the central purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the communities of people who lived in the nation.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIK LOOMIS BY BENJAMIN Y. FONG
Jacobin
The 1930s rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations led to millions of people being union members for the first time. The lesson of the CIO is that it’s necessary to harness the collective power of the working class on a grand scale.
The level of anti-capitalist sentiment in the US today hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. Labor radicals seized that moment to create the pivotal Congress of Industrial Organizations. We should take lessons from their achievements — and their misstep
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