Why don’t Democrats talk about the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act?
And how the New Deal began the creation of the greatest middle class in history?
The U.S. is a hopelessly divided country. Democrats need to realize that they aren’t running against their specific opponents as individuals. Their supporters will vote for them no matter bad they are — because they believe that Republicans are better for the country than Democrats.
Just look at North Carolina’s Rep. Madison Cawthorn or Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Everyone knows they are unqualified and have terrible personal behavior records. But that doesn’t matter. What is important to their supporters is that they would increase the power of the Republican Party in Congress.
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote the most pertinent book for understanding today’s economic issues: “Arguing with Zombies.” He explained how Democrats and the mainstream media have failed to educate American voters about economic realities. Our last century of economic history clearly demonstrates that Republicans have conned voters into believing false narratives about the kinds of policies that benefit the total nation — rich, poor and middle class. And which policies benefit investors and the wealthy — at the expense of everyone else.
When most Americans have thrived under Democratic administrations Republicans say that they would have done even better if they hadn’t raised taxes on the wealthy and spent so much on welfare.
When Republican administrations create a growing wealth and income disparity between the wealthy and the middle-class-and-poor, they say they weren’t in power long enough for their policies to work. Democrats wouldn’t let them cut taxes on the “job creators,” enough, and they insisted on rewarding too many people for not working.
Democrats have been far too defensive, thinking that the historical record is clearly on their side. But that isn’t enough. They’ve got to educate voters about how they’ve been conned, and attack Republicans’ economic record.
For example, ask any random group of individuals if they know about the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Most will have never heard of it. Those who knew of it have no idea that it was the most important and instructive piece of federal legislation ever passed by Congress.
In the middle of the Great Depression, a Democratic congress passed the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. It dictated that employees would be paid time-and-a-half for overtime if they worked over 40 hours a week. Children under 16 could no longer work full-time non-farm jobs, and workers would make at least 25 cents an hour.
Overnight, the 5-day 40-hour workweek replaced the 6-day 60-hour workweek across the country. Since it was federal legislation, corporations couldn’t pit states against each other by offering wages and working conditions below the new national standard.
Republicans charged that “socialism never works,” and the increased costs to businesses during a depression would be an economic disaster. Unemployment would skyrocket. But the unemployment rate actually went down the next year and has never been as high since, except when the pandemic hit. This and other New Deal pro-labor legislations began the creation of the greatest middle class in history.
Whenever Democrats pass any legislation that benefits workers or the middle class and poor, Republicans call it “socialism.” In their view, capitalism is when legislation makes “job creators,” (the wealthy), richer and keeps inflation (rising worker incomes) from going up.
