Frank Stricker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780252043154
- eISBN:
- 9780252052033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043154.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Occupations, Professions, and Work
Wartime deficit spending brought truly full employment, but millions of women were pushed out of blue-collar jobs afterward. Business leaders and conservatives defeated a full-employment bill in ...
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Wartime deficit spending brought truly full employment, but millions of women were pushed out of blue-collar jobs afterward. Business leaders and conservatives defeated a full-employment bill in 1946. Capital flight, urban deindustrialization, and a double recession in the late 1950s destroyed many, especially black, communities. Under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, liberal Keynesian economists used tax cuts and deficit spending to promote more economic growth and full employment. Large-scale spending on the Vietnam War followed. Unemployment stayed below 4 percent for four years, but millions were still jobless. Some of them joined the uprisings of black people that rocked American cities. Dissenting experts realized that the government undercounted unemployment. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty focused too much on fixing poor people and not enough on creating jobs for them. Later, some liberals concluded that economic growth and poverty programs could not bring real full employment. Direct job creation was essential. One such effort was the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).Less
Wartime deficit spending brought truly full employment, but millions of women were pushed out of blue-collar jobs afterward. Business leaders and conservatives defeated a full-employment bill in 1946. Capital flight, urban deindustrialization, and a double recession in the late 1950s destroyed many, especially black, communities. Under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, liberal Keynesian economists used tax cuts and deficit spending to promote more economic growth and full employment. Large-scale spending on the Vietnam War followed. Unemployment stayed below 4 percent for four years, but millions were still jobless. Some of them joined the uprisings of black people that rocked American cities. Dissenting experts realized that the government undercounted unemployment. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty focused too much on fixing poor people and not enough on creating jobs for them. Later, some liberals concluded that economic growth and poverty programs could not bring real full employment. Direct job creation was essential. One such effort was the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).
