Full employment means not only jobs--but productive jobs.
FDR
The Public Record
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1933, until his death on April 12, 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in New York and is best known for his leadership during two of the most significant crises in American history: the Great Depression and World War II. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, a series of programs and reforms aimed at economic recovery and social welfare, which fundamentally reshaped the role of the federal government in American life.
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Americans do not regard jobs that pay substandard wages as productive jobs.
We should also take appropriate measures in peacetime to secure opportunities for new small enterprises and for productive business expansion for which finance would otherwise be unavailable.
But while private capital should finance this expansion program, the Government should recognize its responsibility for sharing part of any special or abnormal risk of loss attached to such financing.
Our full-employment program requires the extensive development of our natural resources and other useful public works.
By harnessing the resources of these river basins, as we have in the Tennessee Valley, we shall provide the same kind of stimulus to enterprise as was provided by the Louisiana Purchase and the new discoveries in the West during the…
If we are to avail ourselves fully of the benefits of civil aviation, and if we are to use the automobiles we can produce, it will be necessary to construct thousands of airports and to overhaul our entire national highway system.
The provision of a decent home for every family is a national necessity, if this country is to be worthy of its greatness--and that task will itself create great employment opportunities.
To make a frontal attack on the problems of housing and urban reconstruction will require thoroughgoing cooperation between industry and labor, and the Federal, State, and local Governments.
An expanded social security program, and adequate health and education programs, must play essential roles in a program designed to support individual productivity and mass purchasing power.
The millions of productive jobs that a program of this nature could bring are jobs in private enterprise.
Through a program of this character we can maintain a national income high enough to provide for an orderly retirement of the public debt along with reasonable tax reduction.
Our present tax system geared primarily to war requirements must be revised for peacetime so as to encourage private demand.
While no general revision of the tax structure can be made until the war ends on all fronts, the Congress should be prepared to provide tax modifications at the end of the war in Europe, designed to encourage capital to invest in new…
As an integral part of this program to maintain high employment, we must, after the war is over, reduce or eliminate taxes which bear too heavily on consumption.
The war will leave deep disturbances in the world economy, in our national economy, in many communities, in many families, and in many individuals.
It will require determined effort and responsible action of all of us to find our way back to peacetime, and to help others to find their way back to peacetime--a peacetime that holds the values of the past and the promise of the future.
If we attack our problems with determination we shall succeed.
For freedom and peace cannot exist without security.
During the past year the American people, in a national election, reasserted their democratic faith.
The Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary have worked together for the common good.
We have a great many problems ahead of us and we must approach them with realism and courage.
This new year of 1945 can be the greatest year of achievement in human history.
Most important of all--1945 can and must see the substantial beginning of the organization of world peace.
This organization must be the fulfillment of the promise for which men have fought and died in this war.
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