Written by Jim Green   

Following WW II, President Truman signed into law the [FULL] EMPLOYMENT ACT of 1946, to provide employment for our returning troops.

Ironically, half-way around the world, Australia codified into their law an almost identical Bill, and for the same reason—

Difference is—Australia actually put their law into effect, and over the next 30 years it was intrinsic to employment policy in Australia that “anybody wanting to work should be able to find a job”—and save for a brief recession in 1961/62 their unemployment was 2%, or less. This period is still referred to as their “Golden Age”, in Australia.

Unforeseen by either country, however, in the mid-1970’s the world economy underwent a major paradigm shift as a result of the colliding forces of automation, globalization, technology, etc., reaching a critical mass—in brief, an adjustment towards modernity—From a perverse perspective, we became victims of our success….

The instability caused by this transition, however, resulted in a malaise, and ushered in the ill-winds of greed-driven neo-liberalism with its indifference to unemployment, and the likes of Thatcher and Reagan—and the menace of this greed-driven agenda was exploded by Bush II, resulting in obscene disparities in wealth that persists, and is the cause of much friction between right and left, to this day.

It also ushered in high and pervasive unemployment throughout our market-driven economies, the OECD—with 6% unemployment in Australia now the norm, and double-digit unemployment common throughout the Eurozone, to this day.

As a result of the “malaise”, the U.S. took an aggressive, pro-active role in addressing the, above, economic shift—and in 1978 President Carter signed into law one of the most important laws in the 20th Century--an expansion of President Truman’s full employment, i.e., Pro-Market15 USC § 3101--which “authorizes” the creation of a “reservoir of public employment” at any time our unemployment in America exceeds “3%”—

But in spite of 3% unemployment being the threshold point above which unemployment starts undermining the Market—this Pro-Market solution has never been implemented.

Jim Green, Democrat opponent to Lamar Smith, Congress, 2000

Bio info: http://www.amazon.com/James-L.-Jim-Green/e/B001KHZIMM/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0