Government Aid Quotes
In the midst of the depression:
Social Security was part of FDR’s New Deal legislation. It was passed in the middle of the Great Depression in 1936. By the end of the 20th century many people had forgotten or never learned that Social Security was a government social program. It provided relieve for two of the biggest social problems—old age retirement and disability. Most people have no idea that they had disability insurance covered by Social Security throughout their working lives unless they happened to be disabled. The price of a comparable private disability plan would be substantial, yet it is a benefit that most people have and few know it.
Defense appropriations have always been easier to get than civilian. Often the military subsidies deliberately were used to strengthen or create civilian enterprises. The American aviation industry would not have developed without military subsidies. American mass production manufacturing was developed with military contracts given to Eli Whitney. And in modern times the Internet was developed with Defense Department Research funds.
Ever since the Civil War, there has been an imbalance between the areas of the country with large unemployed populations and those areas where jobs were available. Even in 1870, the authorities were trying to get the unemployed to relocate but this was a hard thing to do at the time—physically, economically, and psychologically. It was not until the 2nd World War when huge numbers of Blacks migrated from areas of poor economic prospects in the South to areas of opportunity in the North. Also, note the classic welfare dilemma expressed whereby if humanitarian assistance is provided, people will not be desperate enough to move to areas with better opportunities.
Alibaba—the largest e-commerce company in the world, larger than Amazon.com and eBay put together--had hundreds of millions of on-line Chinese buyers and hundreds of thousands of Chinese retailers. A huge proportion of Chinese retail sales go through Alibaba which facilitates a very large part of the Chinese economy.
He wanted to condition long term unemployment insurance payments on the recipient taking training courses or other means of improving his/her skills and becoming more employable. He was opposed on the left by those who observed that this was insurance; the working nothing from the government; the worker had paid for it when he/she was working. It was his and was not conditioned on government requirement. The right wing opposed the idea as they had always wanted the out of work people to have little or no other opportunity than to take the worst and lowest paying jobs in the society. They also pointed out that if training was to be provided, it would cost more and not less. But Gingrich and his supporters on this idea observed that there were many jobs available even with the high unemployment rate; the unemployed workers just did not have the skills to do these jobs. Train them and unemployment would go down. The investment in unemployment insurance and training would pay off many times over.
