New Deal Hard Times Art (4/10): "Two on a Bench"

Above: "Two on a Bench," A lithograph by Eli Jacobi (1898-1984), created while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1939. According to the Asheville Art Museum, "Jacobi worked for the Graphic Arts Division of the WPA Federal Arts Project in New York. His specialty was block printing. Jacobi was also successful as a magazine and book illustrator. He was a contributing illustrator to Nation, Saturday Review, and Living Age magazines." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Gibbes Museum of Art.

Many people, especially those on the political right, often praise capitalism for fostering competition. And in every competition, of course, there are winners and losers. So what do we do with the losers of capitalism? Well, many people, especially those on the political right, would have us neglect and shame them, by cutting back on social safety net programs and labeling the losers "takers," "parasites," and "lazy good-for-nothings." To me, it seems intellectually dishonest and/or very cruel to, on the one hand, praise competition; and then, on the other hand, pretend there are no losers in the competition or, if acknowledged, neglect and shame them.

If we are going to praise capitalism, and glorify the competition it creates, then we should at least have the honesty and compassion to help the losers of capitalism get back in the game - through more liberal debt relief, using the government as an employer of last resort, better access to health care & medicine, more free or even paid job training, and perhaps even a universal basic income. In other words, we need to give more life to the general welfare sections of the Constitution (the Preamble and Article I, Section 8), to counteract the inherent negligence of capitalism and competition.

But will we do so? Well, considering that intellectual honesty about capitalism and competition would ultimately require hard work (e.g., crafting legislation, creating programs, staffing programs, evaluating programs, etc.), whereas intellectual dishonesty requires little more than insulting the poor, self-righteous rhetoric, and dog whistles, I think we can safely assume that we're going to continue to ignore and pooh pooh the general welfare sections of the Constitution, even as our quality of life is continually whittled away by debt, stagnant wages, job outsourcing, and financial fraud by the financial elite.

"In its Preamble, the Constitution states that it was intended to form a more perfect Union and promote the general welfare; and the powers given to the Congress to carry out those purposes can be best described by saying that they were all the powers needed to meet each and every problem which then had a national character and which could not be met by merely local action."

--President Franklin Roosevelt, March 9, 1937, Fireside Chat