For those who don't know much about Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's president during most of the Great Depression and World War II, here's a small documentary about the man to bring you up to speed for this conversation:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Whew! Now, with that out of the way, let's cut to the chase: FDR's January 11th, 1944 proposal for a Second Bill of Rights to the US Constitution in an address to Congress as well as a "fireside chat" radio broadcast to the general public on the same day, with newsreel footage that was apparently lost until rediscovered in South Carolina in 2008. In it, FDR - who signed the GI Bill into law guaranteeing free higher education for military veterans and enacted Social Security for the elderly - outlined what he believed should be the economic rights of every American. These included the following, a right to:
*Employment (right to work), food, clothing and leisure with enough income to support them
*Farmers' rights to a fair income
*Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
*Housing
*Medical care
*Social security
*Education
FDR believed that the original Bill of Rights as enshrined by the nation's founders in the late 18th century "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness". If all of these measures were enacted well before the present day, how different would the United States of America look right now and in the previous decades like the 1970s, 80s, and 90s? There certainly wouldn't be any candidate like Bernie Sanders running in the Democratic party primaries in 2016 and 2020, if we already had something like Medicare for All and public-funded tuition-free college. We would just be taking those things for granted right now.
We also wouldn't have an issue with homelessness, so that means no bums asking me for spare change every time I visit DC.
The bit about farming is interesting in light of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s but also how big agro-corporations are pushing small landholding farmers into bankruptcy and oblivion, gobbling up their lands in the process. It's kind of like the massive aristocratic latifundia landed estates of the late Roman Empire or the feudal estates that arose at the end of China's ancient Eastern Han dynasty, replacing almost all the small but independent landowning Chinese peasantry that had existed in the previous Western Han era and leading to societal unrest, swelling of urban poor and displacement. Here's an article from back in 2016 talking about the decline of small family-owned farms in favor of gigantic corporations who swallow them up and basically receive taxpayer subsidies to do so while the little guys often do not.
Feel free to talk about present-day politics a little bit if necessary, but this thread should be focused on how FDR's proposed economic rights would have transformed the United States even as far back as the 1950s and how that would have affected the economy, international relations and/or state policies. We shouldn't forget that FDR had in mind foreign affairs when he proposed this as well, since he wanted the US to serve as a model for other nations recovering from the Second World War...so, basically an extension of the idea of "American Exceptionalism" especially as the US geared up to replace Japan as the dominant power over the Pacific. LOL. Ironically, today, Japan's social welfare programs like universal healthcare aligns more with FDR's Second Bill of Rights than the US does 70 years after it was proposed.