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The Second New Deal · Saberian History Lectures

• 0:00
  So we left off talking about the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• 0:10
  Now when we look at the election of Roosevelt, we have to keep in mind that during the 1920s you have a collapse of
• 0:23
  and let me get to where I want it to be. Alright, prior to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, you have a collapse of the capitalist system.
• 0:36
  And so one of the things that you have going on is, and you have FDR getting elected in November of 1932.
• 0:48
  It is a landslide. Elements of the Democratic Party are held together and elements of the Republican Party are fractured.
• 0:57
  So what is helpful to first understand the landslide of 1932 is to look at the core constituents of the Democratic and Republican parties.
• 1:10
  This also informs some of FDR's governing tactics in the first New Deal. So if I am a Democrat in 1932,
• 1:20
  what are the two major core constituents of the Democratic Party in 1932?
• 1:26
  Immigrants, union labor. So you have union labor, immigrants, that's what we would call the northern wing of the Democratic Party.
• 1:41
  What is the southern wing of the Democratic Party? Southern conservatives, well we can even say southern conservative whites,
• 1:52
  and I'm even going to put the Klan in parentheses because even into 1932 the Klan is the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party in the south.
• 2:00
  Now, FDR as a candidate does not break up the coalition the way Al Smith did in 1928.
• 2:11
  Al Smith was Catholic, which alienated the southern Democrats, did hold the immigrant labor together.
• 2:17
  Now the other thing is, if I look at the usual suspects for the Republican caucus in 1932,
• 2:27
  my usual suspects are western farmers and northern business interests. And we'll just call those industrialists.
• 2:47
  Now, because of the collapse of the capital market, who might not have an incentive to vote Republican in 1932?
• 2:55
  Business interests. So they're either staying at home or some of them cross over,
• 3:01
  and also due to the depressed agricultural prices, who else might also be in play for the Democratic Party?
• 3:09
  Your western farmers. So you have these major constituents who are part of the Republican coalition,
• 3:16
  no longer firmly in the Republican camp. She is. Thank you. Oh, is she coming now?
• 3:26
  How unfortunate. You'll have to catch this as a recording.
• 3:30
  Alright. So, this paves the way for one of the major landslide elections of American history.
• 3:42
  FDR carries every state but five.
• 3:49
  Now, FDR comes into power, so here you have the presidency dominated by FDR, a Democrat.
• 3:58
  Every two years, the United States elects a new Congress, so you have a House of Representatives that is Democratic.
• 4:07
  And also, every election cycle, what fraction of the Senate is up for grabs?
• 4:14
  One third. Every Senator has to be elected every six years, so in every election cycle, one third of the Senate,
• 4:22
  give or take one or two, because even when the United States is only 48 states, then it actually evenly divides into three,
• 4:30
  but now that we have 50 states in the Union, there's a modulus.
• 4:34
  So, you have the invariable, okay, you know, this person died, we had a special election, stuff like that.
• 4:40
  So, you have a Senate majority that is Democrat, but it's not as large a majority as it is in the House.
• 4:48
  Now, what's the one major branch of the federal government that I haven't addressed yet?
• 4:54
  The judiciary.
• 4:56
  If I am a federal judge in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not appointed me.
• 5:06
  1932, Roosevelt had just been elected. Who was president before Roosevelt? Hoover and before him? Coolidge and before him, Harding.
• 5:20
  You have 12 years of Republican rule from Wilson to FDR.
• 5:26
  In those 12 years, most of the people sitting on the Supreme Court were associated with the laissez-faire,
• 5:34
  limited government ideology of the Republican Party.
• 5:40
  So, this is the last breath of limited government Republicanism going back to the laissez-faire economics of even the 1880s.
• 5:48
  And so, that's going to come up as we keep going.
• 5:51
  So, we had gotten into the New Deal. I kind of wanted to recap it.
• 5:57
  So, March 1933, one of the things, FDR is the last president to be inaugurated in March and the first president to be inaugurated in January.
• 6:08
  So, for example, in our most recent election, we all saw the inauguration of President Trump in January. That custom of March to January occurs during FDRs.
• 6:19
  And I forget if it's the second or the third term that they actually transition from a March inauguration to a January inauguration.
• 6:28
  So, March 1933, you have Walter Lippmann urging President Roosevelt to take on dictatorial powers.
• 6:36
  You know we're in trouble when the press tells the president to act like a dictator, yes?
• 6:40
  So, why did they move the data to not hear anything?
• 6:44
  Literally, so, and that's a good question. I don't remember the term, but here's a basic idea.
• 6:50
  And it's a good aside. I kind of want to go with it, even though we're off the script.
• 6:54
  So, November, we have our elections. Everybody remembers that? Yes?
• 7:03
  December, you have the electoral college for the president.
• 7:20
  Or maybe it was early January. No, it was December when the college actually took place.
• 7:25
  And then January, you have Congress gavels in.
• 7:34
  And so, one of the first acts of Congress in a presidential inauguration year is that a joint session of Congress literally dumps the ballots out from the electoral college and reads the ballots off.
• 7:50
  So, when we talk about the electoral college is at the different state capitals the electors assemble, they put their ballots in a box, the box gets carted off to D.C. to be opened in January. Does that make sense?
• 8:03
  Okay, and then March is the inauguration under the old system. But now if I look at this for a moment, this means who's already been in session? Who has been in session since January?
• 8:21
  Congress. So, Congress under the old system had basically a three month start on the president.
• 8:33
  Think about this for a moment. If I look at an American constitution, and I did print copies of you back in 1301, I know I've often said your 1301 instructor can be a pain.
• 8:46
  And in college your 1301 instructor is not usually your 1302 instructor.
• 8:54
  Article one is Congress. Law originates in Congress. And so, under the old paradigm it would make sense that you have a president coming to power after Congress had been in three months.
• 9:06
  If he can pass legislation then he can say yea or nay. What is the effect of moving the inauguration of a president up so that it coincides barely but only three weeks behind the inauguration of a Congress?
• 9:21
  Puts the president on equal footing. Now the other thing that you have, and it's not addressed in the text, but I think it's germane, Congress would usually go from January to June.
• 9:35
  Congress was only part time until the era of the New Deal. And so what the ramification is, you now are going from January to June with the president, and actually it's in the New Deal that Congress becomes a full time institution going from January to December.
• 9:51
  And so even though the terms got shorter, the productivity didn't get much better because apparently what Roosevelt hadn't learned that every high school teacher knows is deferring the deadlines doesn't actually increase the volume of work.
• 10:03
  People need deadlines. High school students and Congress people. Yes?
• 10:08
  Actually the other thing that was kind of funny, and I brought this up when I was teaching government, is if you actually watch a congressional hearing you'll be surprised how many grown freaking Congress people have their phones in their laps texting like a whole bunch of high school kids.
• 10:19
  It's really quite disgraceful.
• 10:22
  Anyway. Okay. So after that kind of interesting, did I answer your question? And overkill. But anyway, let me get to the next bit.
• 10:34
  So here you have, FDR has his compliant Congress, he comes to power in his first days in office, he closes the banks for four days. And only banks authorized and chartered by the government of the United States can open.
• 10:49
  Okay, that's your federal deposit insurance company where, or corporation where the government backs your deposits. You also have the government now licensing stockbrokers. Previously anyone who could get to the stock market could be a broker.
• 11:04
  Now, this fits with something else that we've talked about. We've seen it in ag, we've seen it in government, and that is what I call the regulation cycle.
• 11:12
  Remember first you have an innovation which leads to a period of chaos. In the chaos there's winners and losers and then you have a period of regulation where the winners and losers get codified.
• 11:32
  If I'm looking at America from the 1920s into the 1930s, what's the innovation that made the economic boom of the 1920s and the economic bust of the 1930s?
• 11:48
  The stock market but also starts with a C. Credit. Belief that people will pay you back. And so here we have the rise of credit markets and credit is great. Credit lets you buy cars. Credit lets you expand domestic output.
• 12:07
  But what happens when people lose their faith? Your stock market, your capital collapse. And so here you have a period of chaos with the boom and with the bust.
• 12:21
  And then you have the period of regulation with your SEC, with your FDIC, with your confiscation of gold in April of 1933. President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 6102 prohibiting the private ownership of gold, coins, and bullion.
• 12:42
  Little bit tyrannical. Just a little bit.
• 12:47
  Okay. Moving on.
• 12:52
  So we got past that.
• 12:55
  One of the other things, and I kind of want to get to this, well, before I get to the people putting to work, is one of the ways that Roosevelt changes the game. And actually I omitted the fourth part, which is deregulation, because there are some parts of the New Deal that haven't been deregulated.
• 13:17
  Because Roosevelt as a leader directly communicates with the people.
• 13:26
  And the way he does it is something that we still have presidents do today. It's the weekly radio address, which they called the fireside chats.
• 13:40
  Why did they call them the fireside chats? Because typically where was the radio in the home?
• 13:45
  By the fire. Do we have a cognate now?
• 13:50
  Well, this president's on Twitter.
• 13:53
  Actually, I think that might be kind of, but think about this for a moment.
• 13:58
  How is, I mean, you all take it for granted that the president is on TV, that the president's on radio, you know his voice, you hear his face, you know his, you see his face. I was about to say you hear his face. If you're hearing his face, then that's, you need to check your medication.
• 14:14
  That's true. Daredevil, yes?
• 14:18
  Yes.
• 14:19
  Alright. But no, the radio, think about it, the president's voice is in your home. That's a lot more intimate.
• 14:30
  And maybe that might be why people get so animated about their presidents. I mean, if you think about it now, how do most people access their news?
• 14:38
  Online.
• 14:39
  Online, through your portable device, you have the president's words in your pocket. And some of you put your cell phones in rather awkward places, so I'm not going to go into all those details.
• 14:52
  Let it go.
• 14:55
  Alright. So the next step is public works. So you have a series of public works. You have the FERA, which is your, and I'm going to write this out, Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
• 15:20
  Actually, there's going to be a rather large alphabet soup that you have to know for this chapter. I'm just going to be honest with you.
• 15:28
  And the FERA has a number of, shall we say, sub-agencies at its disposal, one of which is the CCC.
• 15:36
  The CCC was the Civilian Conservation Corps. Literally, they took a large number of men between the ages of 18 and 25, single men, put them in work camps and put them to work.
• 15:49
  One, because they needed the money. Two, because who is most likely to start a revolution in your country?
• 15:55
  Single 18 to 25 year olds. They're the most dangerous people on earth.
• 16:03
  They've got just enough testosterone to be big and powerful and just not enough frontal cortex to be dangerous.
• 16:10
  And those of you in psychology, again, the frontal cortex is our friend. Even FDR knew what cognitive neuroscience didn't figure out until the early 21st century.
• 16:20
  25 is the magic number for maturity. And the insurance companies have known that since at least the 60s.
• 16:27
  Anyway. Alright. Saving homes. You have the creation of the FHA, which is the Federal Housing Administration.
• 16:36
  By the way, the FHA is still a thing. I'm just going to put admin to chop it down.
• 16:44
  Most first time homeowners get their first home loan through the Federal Housing Administration.
• 16:49
  Originally, if you took out a home loan, you had to do what was called a conventional loan, which was possibly fluctuating interest and usually only about 15 years.
• 16:58
  Most of your parents, when they took out a home loan, they took out what's called a 30 year fixed mortgage and that was backed by the Federal Housing Administration.
• 17:06
  At the time during FDR, it was a 20 year note, not a 30 year note.
• 17:13
  Now, the purpose of all of this is to try and salvage the economy, to prevent homelessness, all good intentions.
• 17:26
  But there's something I want you to think about.
• 17:31
  Where in the Constitution of these United States does it actually allow for the government of the United States to take over the housing market,
• 17:42
  to put a fair portion of the eligible bachelors into a type of concentration camp, or to impose union labor on the industries?
• 17:54
  Where in the Constitution is that even permitted or thought of that a country conceived on the notions of life, liberty, and property should instead have the micromanaging nanny state?
• 18:10
  Nowhere in particular.
• 18:13
  It's derived from a very loose interpretation of the necessary improper clause.
• 18:18
  It's a direct effect to reviving the industrial sector.
• 18:25
  So you have the imposition of labor standards.
• 18:28
  A lot of these are encouraging industries to have a minimum wage and to hire union.
• 18:39
  By the way, why do you hire unions?
• 18:43
  Because they are the Democratic party.
• 18:49
  If I strengthen the unions, I strengthen the party.
• 18:52
  If I strengthen the party, I strengthen my majority.
• 18:55
  Now, is there an element of, yes, we need to raise people's wages?
• 18:58
  Absolutely, but there is sort of the convenience aspect of it.
• 19:02
  Now, something else, and because this is cross-curricular and because I teach math in my other life, I have a little bit of help for you.
• 19:12
  Okay, so actually, no, I'm going to get to the math in a little bit.
• 19:18
  I actually want to keep going.
• 19:20
  Here we go.
• 19:21
  So you have the minimum wage and you have raising the working age.
• 19:32
  In other words, you have laws against child laborers.
• 19:35
  Why do you make laws against child labor?
• 19:39
  Take kids out of the workforce.
• 19:41
  First, you don't have to pay kids as much.
• 19:43
  Second, it's about managing the economy.
• 19:48
  Now, here's something I want you to think about.
• 19:51
  Oh, by the way, first minimum wage was 10 cents an hour.
• 19:56
  Now, that seems very petty, but you forget.
• 20:01
  What's a dollar?
• 20:05
  Troy ounce of silver, 100 cents.
• 20:07
  So a dime is literally one-tenth of a troy ounce of silver.
• 20:10
  Troy ounce of silver right about now is worth about 40 bucks.
• 20:14
  Or no, it's worth more than that.
• 20:16
  10 cents an hour is about, modern money is, it depends on who you ask.
• 20:19
  You're talking closer to eight.
• 20:21
  So wouldn't that be like $4?
• 20:24
  It would be about four, but you've got some other stuff.
• 20:26
  And again, it's a rough inflation, but you're talking literally about a factor of 40, 45,
• 20:31
  depending on which mathematician you consult.
• 20:34
  Now, here's the other thing you got going on.
• 20:36
  So if I'm looking at working age, what's working age?
• 20:41
  15, 16, okay, I might want to do 12.
• 20:47
  Okay, you can put a kid sweeping, doing some jobs at 12, yes?
• 20:52
  Okay, when does working age end?
• 20:57
  In traditional American society before all the employment regulations.
• 21:01
  65 is a modern term.
• 21:03
  When does working age end?
• 21:05
  When you die.
• 21:08
  Now, we do have a period called retirement.
• 21:13
  Retirement literally means to go again.
• 21:15
  What it literally means is when you are so physically broken, you are unable to work,
• 21:21
  especially in the era of manual labor.
• 21:23
  Now, what's life expectancy circa 1932, 50 to 55?
• 21:27
  That's life expectancy.
• 21:29
  Might you live beyond it?
• 21:31
  Yes.
• 21:32
  So you have retirement and death.
• 21:36
  So we're talking 50, and if you made it to 65, you were impressive.
• 21:41
  Also remember this is a time in American history where a lot more people smoked.
• 21:45
  Greatly limited the life expectancy.
• 21:48
  Now, if you want to deal with your unemployment, what do you do?
• 21:55
  Where do you cut people out of the workforce?
• 22:02
  At the beginning and at the end.
• 22:06
  So why would you raise the working age from 12 to 16 or even 18?
• 22:15
  Because all of a sudden working life can get shorter, and if I can make working life shorter,
• 22:21
  I need more people in the workforce.
• 22:23
  In other words, if I get the kids out, I need to put another man in.
• 22:27
  So in Texas, you can start work at 16.
• 22:32
  Also, it's in the Great Depression that high school goes from 10 to 12 years.
• 22:38
  Why would you increase the length of high school?
• 22:41
  To keep them in school, to keep them out of the workforce.
• 22:47
  You get the idea?
• 22:49
  So now you have mandatory ed increasing to keep people out of the workforce,
• 22:56
  and then let's talk about some critics of the New Deal and how we have people getting cut out of the workforce on the other end.
• 23:02
  Actually, I'm going to get to the agricultural adjustment.
• 23:05
  Okay.
• 23:07
  So, agricultural adjustment.
• 23:12
  What had been going on in American agriculture for decades, even going as far back as the 1880s?
• 23:18
  What happened to crop production?
• 23:21
  Increasing, right?
• 23:24
  Remember McCormick, the reaper, the combine?
• 23:29
  So, for a long period of time, you have agricultural production goes up.
• 23:36
  Now, what happens to the value of a product when its availability goes up?
• 23:43
  Price goes down.
• 23:45
  So the produce value goes down.
• 23:53
  Now, what the agricultural adjustment authority did was tried to inflate or tried to bring up the value of agricultural produce.
• 24:05
  And so what you have is the beginning of a farm subsidy program.
• 24:10
  In the farm subsidy, you pay people not to farm.
• 24:17
  And you pay people to cull their herds.
• 24:21
  So, for example, in the textbook talks about it, and other people have talked about it, they rounded up cattle and shot them.
• 24:27
  And they buried the little piggies alive.
• 24:31
  Now, where do you get the money to pay the farmers not to farm?
• 24:36
  In other words, they're not going to not farm if they're going to lose money on the deal.
• 24:39
  So you have to pay them not to farm.
• 24:41
  Where do you get the money for that?
• 24:43
  You've got to tax somebody.
• 24:46
  They would tax the food processors.
• 24:52
  Now, I have some of you who are in ag presently.
• 24:56
  Yes?
• 24:58
  Spencer, what type of ag?
• 25:01
  I'm in the ag team class.
• 25:03
  Okay, but what's getting grown or raised?
• 25:06
  Steers.
• 25:07
  Hogs.
• 25:09
  Okay, I'm going to stick with the pig analogy just because we talked about the little pigs being buried.
• 25:13
  Okay, so steers are fun too, but I've got a craving for bacon.
• 25:20
  I don't know why.
• 25:21
  All right.
• 25:24
  Hey, bacon, it's what made the Roman Empire possible.
• 25:27
  All right, so you're raising hogs, right?
• 25:29
  So does that make it hog farming or is that swine herding?
• 25:34
  Swine herd used to be a word.
• 25:35
  Okay, I don't know if it's still a word in English anymore.
• 25:38
  Anyway, so you're raising the pig, you fatten it up, right?
• 25:41
  Then it goes off to the slaughterhouse, right?
• 25:44
  Then it gets sliced and diced into all different ways.
• 25:46
  It gets cured into bacon.
• 25:48
  It gets made into all sorts of different products.
• 25:51
  In the end, who bears the expense of a tax upon the processor?
• 26:00
  Say it again?
• 26:01
  Specifically the consumer.
• 26:03
  So if I'm a consumer, I am actually negotiating a double whammy of higher food prices.
• 26:08
  I am paying for the higher food price because now they're culling the herds
• 26:12
  and they're reducing production, which increases the value.
• 26:15
  And I'm paying the increased cost for processed foods in the era of more refrigeration.
• 26:21
  And so I'm literally getting hit with the double whammy.
• 26:24
  And the Agricultural Adjustment Administration is in many ways,
• 26:28
  it's sticking it to the processors, but in the end it's also sticking it to the consumers
• 26:32
  in a country with 25% unemployment.
• 26:37
  Okay.
• 26:39
  Regional Planning, the TVA, Tennessee Valley Administration,
• 26:43
  brings electrical power and flood control to Appalachia.
• 26:46
  Now, when I'm talking about Tennessee Valley and below, who am I talking about?
• 26:52
  What type of people live in the Tennessee Valley?
• 26:56
  Where is the Tennessee Valley?
• 26:58
  And to the south.
• 27:02
  Why would I spend a large amount of taxpayer dollars to build a dam in Tennessee?
• 27:11
  To buy boats.
• 27:14
  To further undergird my coalition.
• 27:18
  And so here they have a picture of the Norris Dam, where they spent a lot of money,
• 27:23
  or as my mentor teacher said, they spent a lot of dam money holding back the dam water.
• 27:27
  But anyway, I think I get to make that joke.
• 27:31
  Alright, moving on.
• 27:35
  Okay, Eleanor Roosevelt, first rather outspoken First Lady,
• 27:39
  one of the first First Ladies who actually got to vote,
• 27:42
  because women didn't start voting until 1920,
• 27:45
  elevates the position of First Lady to something of a public official,
• 27:50
  albeit an unpaid one, and now in this most recent electoral cycle,
• 27:55
  people almost saw the First Lady seat as a warm-up position, but anyway.
• 28:00
  Another time. Alright, moving on.
• 28:03
  Okay, so in the face of all of these economic machinations,
• 28:09
  you do not have a substantial uptick to the economy.
• 28:13
  You still have malnutrition and starvation abounding.
• 28:17
  I am going to touch on this briefly.
• 28:19
  The textbook deals in it in greater detail,
• 28:21
  more than what I feel comfortable talking about right now.
• 28:24
  Some major court cases where, again,
• 28:27
  the New Deal was not a New Deal for everyone.
• 28:32
  And again, did the FDR administration feel a great need to speak out on the issue of civil rights,
• 28:39
  not when a key feature of their coalition is the Southern conservatives.
• 28:44
  Critics of the New Deal.
• 28:46
  Huey Long.
• 28:49
  Can I erase this bit? Yes?
• 28:51
  Huey Long, interestingly enough,
• 28:55
  kind of makes the argument that the New Deal didn't go far enough.
• 29:02
  Now, Huey Long actually advocated that the government provide a salary of $2,500 to poor people, individuals,
• 29:11
  and $5,000 for every poor family.
• 29:14
  A baseline state-funded minimum income.
• 29:18
  We have actually heard about this concept in our modern times.
• 29:21
  There are certain far progressive elements of the American left that have actually spoken to a plan like this.
• 29:28
  Townsend, interestingly enough, proposed actually that the government pay a pension of $200 a month
• 29:34
  if people over 60 stop working.
• 29:39
  That sounds familiar. Why does that sound familiar?
• 29:44
  Does the government of these United States provide a subsidy for people not to work?
• 29:51
  Now, Social Security.
• 29:53
  A government-funded retirement system.
• 29:59
  I'll tell you how we got from A to B in just a moment.
• 30:01
  You also have Father Coughlin.
• 30:03
  Father Coughlin is a radio broadcasting Catholic priest out of Detroit
• 30:07
  who actually accused the Roosevelt administration and all of its machinations of taking on dictatorial powers
• 30:13
  and of basically promoting communism in the United States.
• 30:20
  His social justice movement stood in opposition to the New Deal in many ways.
• 30:28
  FDR is taking flack from his left, for lack of a better word.
• 30:34
  One of the other critiques is he's running into attacks from the right.
• 30:40
  And so there are a number of key Supreme Court decisions that don't go his way.
• 30:44
  Now remember I said the judiciary was still a holdover from Hoover, from Harding, and from Coolidge.
• 30:57
  So, Schechter versus the U.S.
• 30:59
  The Court found that many of the regulations that were coming out of these executive agencies were unconstitutional
• 31:06
  because according to the Constitution, who writes law?
• 31:11
  Who writes law?
• 31:14
  Legislature.
• 31:16
  Executive overreach.
• 31:19
  Hmm.
• 31:21
  More things change, hmm?
• 31:23
  Alright, so basically the Court found that an agency couldn't write its own rules, that that was the purview of Congress.
• 31:29
  That Schechter versus U.S. was a unanimous Court decision.
• 31:34
  U.S. versus Butler, the Court found that the Agricultural Adjustment Agency could not levy its own taxes without the consent of Congress.
• 31:44
  Because the power to levy taxes originates in the House of Representatives.
• 31:49
  Now if you're FDR and you have a Court that's not going your way, what do you do?
• 31:56
  You try and change the Court, yes?
• 31:59
  We'll get to that in a moment.
• 32:02
  So when your first New Deal isn't working, don't worry, you have a second five-year plan.
• 32:09
  I mean a second New Deal.
• 32:12
  Alright.
• 32:14
  Stalin had several five-year plans and so I did note the analog.
• 32:18
  Okay, so in the second New Deal, you have the Works Progress Administration, which again is a more nuanced spending on public works.
• 32:27
  One of the things kind of interesting is while the FERA focused on, for lack of a better word, straight building projects,
• 32:35
  the Works Progress Administration, in addition to building roads, building bridges, upgrading the national parks,
• 32:42
  they also did a lot of funding for like historical research and arts and humanities type stuff.
• 32:51
  So there are some really cool oral sources in the LBJ Library that are complements of the Works Progress Administration
• 32:59
  where people are doing oral histories going back to the early 20th and into the late 19th century,
• 33:03
  which is really kind of cool, but you know, there we go.
• 33:06
  Then you have the Wagner Act that basically forced companies to hire unions.
• 33:14
  And I'm trying to remember if it is the Wagner Act or if it was a separate labor act.
• 33:19
  I'm going to get to Social Security also. Actually, I'm going to do Social Security first.
• 33:24
  And then I'll get to the origin of overtime.
• 33:28
  Okay, Social Security. How many of you, what's retirement age in this country? 65.
• 33:39
  So Social Security, you have the Roosevelt Administration taking Townsend's idea of paying people a retirement pension
• 33:48
  to get them out of the workforce, but instead of paying them at 60, they move it to 65.
• 33:55
  So here's retirement age.
• 33:59
  After that, the government pays for your retirement until what? Until you die.
• 34:08
  So the idea was to take these people out of the workforce, take the bottom end of the people out of the workforce.
• 34:16
  Kind of interesting. When you first enter the workforce, do you get paid much?
• 34:20
  No, because you've got no experience. End of your career, you get paid more usually.
• 34:27
  By taking these people out of the workforce, we're not paying them their full salary, we're paying them a quotient.
• 34:32
  Now here's the funny thing. Social Security in 1933-34 was designed to kick in at age 65.
• 34:40
  What was life expectancy in 1933-34?
• 34:43
  Try 55. 55 to 60. So what does that mean?
• 34:50
  Well, not nobody. Most of the people that you would collect money on, most of the people who would be paid for Social Security would already be dead.
• 35:00
  Giving people a benefit after more than half of them had died. Where have we heard that one before?
• 35:07
  The bonus army of 1932. Really, they weren't going to get paid until 1945.
• 35:15
  Dazzardly people in the government doing math.
• 35:18
  Now, here's the one, and I say this with the utmost of conviction. This was a chain that was forged in the 1930s and you still wear it.
• 35:27
  Who pays into Social Security? All of you. How many of you work a job and you look at your paycheck and you see how much of that money goes into Social Security?
• 35:36
  Well, yes. Here's the fun part.
• 35:42
  Here's the fun part. What's retirement age?
• 35:47
  Still 65. What's life expectancy?
• 35:52
  70 something. How many of you have a grandparent in their 60s? In their 70s? In their 80s?
• 36:02
  Just turned 80. Anybody got anybody in their 90s? Is it a great grandparent or the like?
• 36:08
  Okay. So, they have not increased the retirement age even though life expectancy has increased.
• 36:18
  So, let me just give you a Cassandra's warning that we might be all doomed.
• 36:24
  Let me give you an example. First of all, so my grandmother died at age 94. My grandfather retired at age 65.
• 36:36
  Do the math. She was on Social Security for 28 years. He was only working for 45 years.
• 36:45
  Let's assume he started at 20. Actually, his working life was longer than that.
• 36:50
  But for some of his working life, there was no Social Security because my grandfather was born in the 19-teens.
• 36:56
  But you get the idea. Okay. So, here's the fun one. And I want you to think about this for a moment.
• 37:03
  When does working age really start for the Millennials? 25, if you think about it.
• 37:10
  We're encouraging this generation to go to high school, to go to college, to go to some of them even grad school.
• 37:16
  And because of the economic calamity of 2008-2009, you have delayed entry into the job market, delayed entry into the gene pool.
• 37:24
  And so, really, I mean, you can say 20 to 25. If retirement age doesn't move, how long do you all plan to live?
• 37:39
  90 for y'all is not an unreasonable expectation. Y'all's generation might even live to be centenarians.
• 37:47
  So now, here you have 25 years here and maybe 40 years here.
• 37:57
  When your working life starts approaching parity with your retirement years, the system fails.
• 38:06
  Alright, hang on. But wait, there's more.
• 38:12
  Alright, couple other dastardly things before we get to soaking the rich in the court packing scheme.
• 38:19
  Alright. It is also in the Roosevelt administration that you have the 40-hour work week.
• 38:31
  Now, how many of you have employers that's like, no, you can't work past this amount.
• 38:38
  Even when you're not in school, there's like, okay, they cut your hours deliberately because they don't want to pay overtime.
• 38:44
  Alright, so let's have some fun.
• 38:47
  Okay. So prior to the 40-hour work week, how long was the working day?
• 39:05
  12.
• 39:10
  How many days a week?
• 39:13
  That's true, but customarily they would give you one off because again you still have Sunday as an act of religious piety.
• 39:25
  Alright, I got a question. 12 times 6?
• 39:28
  72.
• 39:29
  72, good job.
• 39:30
  Now, if I change the work day to 40 hours, that's 8 times 5, yes?
• 39:39
  That's 40.
• 39:40
  Good. Now, what do they pay you if you work overtime?
• 39:48
  Not double. Time and a half.
• 39:54
  What's 12 divided by 8? Well, 12 divided by 8 reduces to 3 over 2, which as a decimal is...
• 40:07
  I'm sorry, I forgot.
• 40:13
  Simple arithmetic, gotta love it.
• 40:14
  Alright, now, hang on. Why do you have a system of overtime?
• 40:19
  Why do you reduce the length of a work day for wage employees down to 40 hours a week?
• 40:27
  I need now almost two men to do what used to be the job of one.
• 40:35
  Now, again, a lot of people would say, well, this is civilized, and yes it is, but there's the civilized and there's the crass.
• 40:44
  And very often politics is never, ever about the stated reason.
• 40:50
  Alright, moving on.
• 40:53
  So, taxing the rich.
• 40:59
  To pay for some of these, they impose a tax on people making more than $50,000.
• 41:04
  The unions start pressing for more, and then you have...
• 41:13
  the court packing scheme.
• 41:16
  So, in many of the Supreme Court cases, the Supreme Court itself was an impediment to the New Deal.
• 41:28
  So, if you're an FDR or if you're a Democrat in Congress, do you want the Supreme Court to change?
• 41:36
  Now, it's kind of unfashionable to assassinate judges, so what else do you do?
• 41:41
  Add more judges.
• 41:43
  And so, the President proposed the addition of, and I forget if it was four or five, I believe it was adding five more justices to the Supreme Court.
• 41:58
  Now, who appoints justices to the Supreme Court?
• 42:02
  The President, and so the idea was simple.
• 42:05
  Increase the size of the court, and I can add my people in, and that gives me a generational majority on the court.
• 42:12
  Now, here's the thing.
• 42:14
  In order for this to pass, what do you need?
• 42:19
  It's not a constitutional amendment.
• 42:21
  The number of justices on the Supreme Court is not a matter of constitutional law.
• 42:27
  In fact, there was a time when there were only seven, not nine.
• 42:32
  Actually, that actually came up with the death of Justice Scalia and whether or not to confirm Merrick Garland,
• 42:38
  who was the appointee of President Obama, or whether or not to appoint, oh, his name escapes me right now, the person that Trump put up.
• 42:47
  Anyway, and somebody had pointed out, no, there was a time in American history there were only seven.
• 42:52
  And so, but it needs to get past the House and the Senate.
• 42:58
  It passed the House.
• 43:00
  But even Senate Democrats acquiesced at the idea of adding that much power to this President.
• 43:13
  In the end, going into 1936 and even going into 1940, the Depression had not slaked.
• 43:24
  Despite all of the machinations, despite all of the chains that have been forged that are still being worn by generations today,
• 43:33
  it would take the destructive power of a world at war to revitalize the American economy.
• 43:41
  Questions, problems, concerns?