Fulfilling FDR’s Dream: His Second Bill of Rights
I have engaged in a heated exchange off line with people who are upset about taxing billionaires. They feel sure that taxing the 1% or the .00025% is a slippery slope, and soon enough we will all pay taxes so high that we will have to give up our homes.
This is a good time, I think, to revisit Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union Address. FDR came from the landed gentry but he somehow developed an acute social conscience.
Here is an excerpt from that speech, in which he described the “second Bill of Rights,” what he called “an economic bill of rights.”
He said, as he looked forward to the day when the World War came to an end:
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some CONTINUE READING: Fulfilling FDR’s Dream: His Second Bill of Rights | Diane Ravitch's blog