A clip from a short government film about the the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal programs started during the Great Depression.

Uploaded by YouTube user: FasttrackHistory, 30 January 2009

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From The Progressive, posted 27 October 2009, by Julianne Malveaux:

[snip]

By [1932] the Great Depression was raging, with unemployment rates rising to 25 percent.

To combat unemployment and alleviate poverty, the federal government engaged in a massive public works and jobs program through the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Private markets weren’t about to create jobs, and the public sector became the employer of last resort. The job creation from the WPA provided survival and sustenance for millions of American families. Where is the contemporary WPA?

Absent public job creation, it is likely that the economy will not fully recover…

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Related on Past in Print:

Hey Obama, while you’re at it, bring back the CCC

From Talking Points Memo, 19 February 2009 post, by Robert Reich:

The stock market reached a six-year low today. Why? Some blame loose talk (including that of former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan) about nationalizing the nation’s banks. Others blame Obama’s new plan for helping homeowners who may not be able to pay their mortgages. But the real culprit is the accelerating decline in aggregate demand — consumers, businesses, and exports. Companies are losing money because their customers are disappearing. That’s precisely why the stimulus is so important — indeed, why many of us fear it’s too small.

One of the oddest of right-wing claims is that FDR’s New Deal didn’t pull America out of the Great Depression, so Barack Obama’s “New New Deal” won’t, either. While it’s true that the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression, three points need to be impressed on the hard-pressed conservative mind…

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From Huffingtonpost.com, 17 November 2008:

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman was around to remind Will of some history — that the economy improved after the New Deal, and that it was FDR’s attempt to balance the budget in 1937 (a move favored now by many conservatives) that then cut into that progress.
WATCH

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