Bring Back the New Deal

It's not what it was, but President Joe Biden is on the case.

Thank you, Frances Perkins.

I sometimes think the New Deal should be called the Perkins Deal. When president-elect Franklin Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins to become the first woman cabinet secretary in American history, she didn’t say, “I thought you’d never ask.” She reached into her purse and took out a sheet of paper that looked like a grocery list. Except the items on this grocery list were:

• 40-hour week

• minimum wage

• workers comp

• unemployment insurance

• federal ban on child labor

• Social Security

• health insurance

I’ll become the first cabinet secretary in American history, Frances Perkins told Franklin Roosevelt, if you agree to do these things.

FDR said yes, and the only item they failed to achieve was the hardest, national health insurance. It’s a little painful today to look at this list of bedrock New Deal achievements because Social Security is insolvent and funded by a regressive tax; the federal ban on child labor is being chipped away by poor enforcement and state legislatures that actually want to encourage child labor; the hourly federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for two decades; and, oh yeah, the 40-hour week, which used to be available to the majority of salaried workers, is available today to a small minority. Frances Perkins would be very cross with us.

On this last point, however, I can report progress. President Joe Biden issued a final rule this week that will increase the wage ceiling that makes workers automatically eligibile for a 40-hour work week (which is to say, you work more than 40 hours, the boss pays time-and-a-half) to within shouting distance of the median weekly wage. Four million more workers will become eligible for overtime pay. That’s a pretty big deal, and the topic of my latest New Republic piece. You can read it here.

Also: If you happen to be in Washington, DC, come see me interview Joseph Stiglitz tonight about his new book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society at the Sixth & I Synagogue, 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 to watch us in meat space and $12 to watch us on your computer, which you can do from anyplace on God’s green earth because it’s 2024 and you never have to leave your house to do anything anymore, which is kind of great and kind of creepy. See you there.