People Must Live by Work : Direct Job Creation in America, from FDR to Reagan / Steven Attewell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Attewell, Steven, author.

Series:

Politics and culture in modern America.

Politics and Culture in Modern America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Job creation--Government policy--United States--History--20th century.

Job creation.

Public service employment--United States--History--20th century.

Public service employment.

Full employment policies--United States--History--20th century.

Full employment policies.

Job creation--United States--History--20th century.

United States.

Genre:

History

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 pages).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In People Must Live by Work, Steven Attewell presents the history of an idea-direct job creation-that transformed the role of government in ameliorating unemployment by hiring the unemployed en masse to prevent widespread destitution in economic crises. For ten years, between 1933 and 1943, direct job creation was put into practice, employing more than eight million Americans and making the federal government the largest single employer in the country. Yet in 2008, when the most dramatic economic crisis since the Depression occurred, the idea of direct job creation was nowhere to be found on the list of policies deemed feasible or advisable for government at any level.People Must Live by Work traces the rise and fall of direct job creation policy-how it was put into practice, how it came within a hairbreadth of becoming a permanent feature of American economic and social administration, and why it has been largely forgotten or discounted today. Contrary to more conventional arguments, Attewell reveals that the New Deal ended the Great Depression before the United States entered World War II and its jobs programs continued to influence policy debates over the Employment Act of 1946. He examines the deliberations surrounding the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act that was signed into law in 1978 and demonstrates the ways in which direct job creation played a significant and polarizing role in dividing the economic establishment and the Democratic party in the 1970s. People Must Live by Work not only chronicles the ambition, constraints, and achievements of direct job creation policy in the past but also proposes a framework for understanding its enduring significance and promise for today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction. Prehistory of an Idea

Chapter 1. First Objective of Reform: Direct Job Creation in the Committee of Economic Security and the Designing of the New Deal

Chapter 2. People or Projects: The Works Progress Administration Versus the Public Works Administration Reconsidered as Economic Theory and Ideology

Chapter 3. "One Third of a Nation": WPA Direct Job Creation Reconsidered as a Policy Success

Chapter 4. Right to Work? Rethinking the Promise of Full Employment in the 1945 Moment

Chapter 5. Jobs and Freedom: The Missing Front in the War on Poverty

Chapter 6. The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act: The High-Water Mark for Direct Job Creation in "the New Deal That Never Happened"

Conclusion. Jobs and the Policy Imagination

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Nov 2018)

ISBN:

9780812295313

0812295315

OCLC:

1045629874