Channeling FDR: The Moral Case Against Unemployment

Photo: jimcintosh

My last weekend in D.C. provided a final chance to enjoy my favorite haunts. And so I found myself walking amongst the memorialized giants of U.S. history: Washington, Lincoln, and now, Martin Luther King. On I walked, through the FDR Memorial, where I stumbled across the chiseled message below. Sure, I had seen it before. But I had forgotten how beautiful it is. And with the President about to announce his new jobs package, and Congress set to (hopefully!) debate these measures, it seems well worth sharing my serendipitous moment with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  A reminder, if you like, of why we care.

If my photo isn’t entirely clear, let me reproduce the full quote:

No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources.  Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance.  Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.

I’m sure FDR would acknowledge the usual economic case against unemployment—billions of dollars of lost output and rising fiscal pressure. And certainly, we hear this a lot in Washington. But I find FDR so persuasive because he advocates an explicitly moral argument, reminding us of the corrosive and demoralizing effects of unemployment.
This speech continues beyond the parts that were memorialized, and it is just as important:

I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed and that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return.

Wise words, worth bearing in mind when the policy debate heats up.