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unemployment insurance is the core of the US social safety net (such as it is) and our primary automatic stabilizer ... created in the Great Depression, under leadership by Frances Perkins. going to read more about her this week, she’d be crushed today too.
new orders. thanks for the recs!
here’s Francis Perkin’s at her interview with FDR for @USDOL Secretary ... she said she’d accept his offer only if she could pursue this agenda. PS he agree and she took the job PPS she oversaw a “fundamental and radical” change in how we support people in the US.
Frances Perkins’ roots in service to working poor began in her 20s in Chicago. she moved there in 1904. volunteering at a settlement house in its poorest neighborhoods, at the time Upton Sinclair’s *Jungle*
bet she’d be crushed at the disrepair of unemployment insurance today (by no means perfect at its start). doubt she’d be surprised at moralizing over jobless in this crisis. her path affirms that leading policy change must come from knowledge and respect for those served by it.
talk about living among people with diverse views and life experiences ... my neighborhood in Arlington is not a center of “intellectual ferment”
ok, amused. Frances Perkins had a plan 
... and kept “Notes on the Male Mind” 
PS same chapter recalls how she advocated for and helped got a 54 hour work week in New York passed in 1911
... and kept “Notes on the Male Mind” PS same chapter recalls how she advocated for and helped got a 54 hour work week in New York passed in 1911
^ correction: passed in 1912. failed first time in 1911. In between she worked and other advocates worked to break the log jam. PS what passed excluded canneries, she accepted it since many others benefited. don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. (canneries added next year).
boom 
Frances Perkins goes after President Hoover for some bullshit talk about employment statistics (abuse of non-seasonally adjusted data, sigh) cc @marthagimbel
Frances Perkins goes after President Hoover for some bullshit talk about employment statistics (abuse of non-seasonally adjusted data, sigh) cc @marthagimbel
after Perkins became Secretary of @USDOL she breathed new life into @BLS_gov ... “statistics represent real people, coping with conditions as best they can” Amen!!
oh look, FDR Admin comes in during grave distress of Great Depression and first order of business: repeal Prohibition. see macro guys, popular policies help get other stuff done!
she’s a badass
if you’re wondering I’m reading this book: it’s for lessons, mainly on the birth of unemployment insurance (our fundamental auto stabilizer) . also getting lessons on employment programs ... here: use skills unemployed people have, such as artists beautifying public works.
and here: run employment programs, ah least in part, by people who have experienced joblessness themselves. we cannot fully serve people with whom we cannot empathize. truth.
reminds of another book I read about full employment, which argues that Keynesian in Kennedy’s @WhiteHouseCEA pushed macro stabilization over full employment jobs programs and won the day. interesting how past policy decades got us here. got a feeling another one is brewing now https://twitter.com/claudia_sahm/status/1221420627489366016
one last bit for now: as first woman Cabinet member, Frances’ appearance was under constant scrutiny ... ps interesting how she dealt with it. pps she was adamantly opposed to being in profile pieces (as I am) but I like to do press, she did not. ppps squirrel fur accents, wow
interesting Secretary of @USDOL in 1930s had oversight of immigration. fascinating account of Frances Perkins trying to get German Jews into US in 1933 to save from Nazis, note well, in Great Depression fierce opposition to immigration in US.
actually I think that passage is on 1935 (book jumps around a bit) but examples in years before that of her trying to work within restrictive laws and get more Jews to safety. goodness I started reading the book to learn about north of unemployment insurance. getting a lot more.
wow, just finished chapter on the creation of unemployment insurance, Social Security, and some other safety net programs in 1935z. too many screenshots to share. will say Frances Perkins is a badass and we must do a much better job and strengthen the safer net she championed.
would really encourage academics to read historical accounts of economic policymaking ... saw a lot of real world lessons in the book that rang true ... Ps I was labor/macro in my econ PhD, never studied Perkins or the New Deal. uh, not a good look econ. learning now 
UI group DM is giving me many ideas of Frances Perkins swag. you can order stamps here.: https://www.etsy.com/listing/883950460/frances-perkins-sheet-of-fifty-15-cent?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=frances+perkins&ref=sr_gallery-1-6&organic_search_click=1&frs=1 already got a t-shirt, thanks to them. https://twitter.com/Claudia_Sahm/status/1299817039092211717?s=20 ok, I really needed some happy today. now to finish my opinion piece on how to improve jobless benefits!
oooh, got to part of the book on fight for a national minimum wage (so called hour-wage law since also limited work hours) ... first attempt early in New Deal was struck down by a Supreme Court ... after later win on Social Security and unemployment insurance, Perkins tried again
Frances Perkins’ original proposal that FDR brought to Congress allowed for regions / industries to have different minimums based on local cost of living ... it met fierce opposition from businesses in South and North
if at first you don’t succeed, try try again: went with a national one, started low and ramped up minimum and phased down hours. look, people politics and views well beyond academic views has ALWAYS been a part of minimum wage (and labor standards in general) ... as it should be.
ALWAYS remember that policies affect millions of people often in profound ways. LISTEN TO PEOPLE.
please, economists find a book on history of the policy you study. I started a research grant on automatic direct payments to people in recessions ... was encouraged to go back and read about birth of automatic stabilizers in US (unemployment insurance) in New Deal. loving it.
next month starting on Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model analysis, cutting edge (not perfect) macro model for distributional analysis (how policies affect different groups of people) ... so my project’s got past, present, and future. 
so Frances Perkins the first woman to be a Cabinet Secretary was also the first Secretary Congress tried to impeach ... was over her handling of an immigrant who was alleged to be a Communist agent. (Labor oversaw immigration then.) she wasn’t impeached but ugh.
as FDR was set to start his fourth term, Perkins asked to resign (again), he refused (again) ... in her resignation letter she had detailed her accomplishments remember that list (higher up in the thread) she gave him before she accepted the job. nearly mission accomplished.
she did successfully resign after FDR passed away and Truman took office. I haven’t said much about it but her gender had subjected her to much criticism, especially by press and other politicians ... she never complained and kept doing her job. here’s someone who understood her.
will tie up my thread with my purpose in reading the book: to understand how she helped bring us policies like unemployment insurance (photo of her at the signing). policies that support workers and their families to this day. she understood people matter and deserve respect.
