President Franklin D. Roosevelt used “Keynesian Economics” to pull us out of the depression following Wall Street’s crash of 1929. It got people working again through the Civilian Conservation Core, Works Progress Administration and huge construction projects, i.e., Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam — and smaller ones like Chico’s downtown Post Office and the Chico State Amphitheater on Big Chico Creek. The “Feds” were supporting jobs to jump start desperately-needed local money circulation.
You can imagine how the super wealthy elite of the world called Keynesian economics “Socialism.” Roosevelt’s New Deal set up Social Security, farm subsidies to guarantee food production and regulations on Wall Street to avoid future depressions. Behind closed doors, big money interests fought it and anything like it to this day.
Keynesian Economics pretty much came to a halt near the end of Jimmy Carter’s administration around 1979. Milton Friedman-type gurus raised interest rates to a whopping 21 percent. Home building plummeted. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers were disastrously affected. When Reagan said “no” to building low-income housing altogether and made drastic cuts in social services, the fate of Keynesianism was sealed. “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” became the Washington D.C. mantra.
Today, “neoliberalism” is the U.S. economic model — deregulation, privatization, reduced government, unfettered capitalism. The effects of neo-liberalism? Fifty billion dollars more in billionaire Jeff Bezos’ bank account since Jan. 1 and increased numbers of homeless people without boots, bootstraps or a federal government that gives a damn about them.