A Hamilton Project and the Victory Over Want
Remarks on the Hamilton Project by James Cumes
In the only event that might
compare with the economic disaster that threatens us today – the Great
Depression of the 1930s - the only course of action that proved successful in
alleviating the miseries of the time consisted of public investment in infrastructure,
housing, transport and communications, and other forms of public enterprise and
amenities. Public investment directly and simultaneously stimulated both supply
and demand. It provided employment in a wide variety of forms. It stimulated
private investment, with a substantial multiplier effect throughout the
economy. That experience of the 1930s provides a precedent for what we might do
if, as seems highly likely, another severe economic and financial crisis,
spreading from the United States throughout the world, strikes us in the months
or years ahead.
To meet such a
crisis through public investment, this time on a worldwide basis, would be
particularly appropriate and beneficial in the light of the characteristics of
the crisis. A key characteristic in the unfolding of that crisis is the way
that the once magnificent productive power of the United States has drained
away.
Thirty years
ago, the United States was undoubtedly the greatest economic power in human
history. It combined energy and inventiveness with skills of production,
organisation and management that enabled it to produce more in greater quantity
in shorter time than any society had ever done before. Mass production,
know-how and can-do applied with special meaning to America and the American
people.
The basic potential of the
country and its remarkable people are still there. That potential has not been
permanently “outsourced” or destroyed in the 21st century any more than it was
in the 1930s – although it is clearly in a state of suspended animation. What
we need is to restore the economic power of America and Americans by utilising
the immense potential that is still there to satisfy the needs of their own
national economy and to meet the needs of the global economy. We can do this in
ways that will not only banish poverty from the planet but that will also
enable us to begin tackling the problems of the global environment and the
introduction of processes of peaceful change essential to longer-term human
survival.
Apart from its
humanitarian aspects, a program of this kind would be a global manifestation of
the kind of public enterprise exemplified by the Tennessee Valley Authority in
the United States during the Great Depression or the Marshall Plan after the
Second World War. Both those enterprises helped the United States itself to
recover and the Marshall Plan enabled others to recover and/or advance along
with it. A global program of recovery now would be a challenge to investment,
productivity and production that America can still – probably uniquely – meet.
Despite the draining away of so much of its economic vigour in recent decades,
the strength, versatility and creativity of the American economy and its people
almost certainly could be revived now just as they were invigorated in such
formidable measure in the Marshall Plan and other economic development programs
during the quarter century immediately after the Second World War.
That is the essence of the
way in which we should proceed. Some other projects are aiming in the same
direction. The supporters of the Hamilton Project – resting on the “Pillars of
Growth and Opportunity” - “believe that America's promise - that education and
hard work can provide each individual with the opportunity to advance - is in
jeopardy because our nation is neither paying its own way nor investing
adequately in its future. The Project's economic strategy reflects a judgment
that long-term prosperity is best achieved by making economic growth
broad-based, by enhancing individual economic security, and by embracing a role
for effective government in making needed public investments.” The Hamilton Project differs from the
Victory Over Want (VOW) initiative outlined in the Annex in that it seems to be
focussed more exclusively on the United States whereas VOW is essentially for
the world economy and society as a whole – including the United States. The
ideal would be to bring projects and proposals of these kinds together so that
the effort to tackle poverty and achieve sustainable growth, equality of
opportunity and peaceful change can be more effectively pursued.
Whether we will, in fact, be able to proceed in such orderly, rational ways is the crucial question. The present administration in Washington does not seem well designed or conditioned to adopt policies of this kind; and more than two years remain of that administration’s tenure.