Download or read book The Political Failure of Employment Policy 1945 1982 written by Gary Mucciaroni and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This political history analyzes the failure of the United States to adopt viable employment policies, follows U.S. manpower training and employment policy from the 1946 Employment Act to the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982. Between these two landmarks of legislation in the War on Poverty, were attempts to create public service employment (PSE), the abortive Humphrey-Hawkins Act, and the beleaguered Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).Mucciaroni's traces the impact of economic ideas and opinions on federal employment policy. Efforts at reform, he believes, are frustrated by the tension between economic liberty and social equality that restricts the role of government and holds workers themselves accountable for success or failure. Professional economists, especially Keynesians, have shaped the content and timing of policy innovations in such ways as to limit employment programs to a social welfare mission, rather than broader, positive economic objectives. As a result, neither labor nor management has been centrally involved in making policy, and employment programs have lacked a stable and organized constituency committed to their success. Finally, because of the fragmentation of U.S. political institutions, employment programs are not integrated with economic policy, are hampered by conflicting objectives, and are difficult to carry out effectively. As chronic unemployment and the United States' difficulties in the world marketplace continue to demand attention, the importance of Mucciaroni's subject will grow. For political scientists, economists, journalists, and activists, this book will be a rich resource in the ongoing debate about the deficiencies of liberalism and the best means of addressing one of the nation's most pressing social and political problems. Mucciaroni's provocative theoretical analysis is buttressed by several years' research at the U.S. Department of Labor, access to congressional hearings, reports, and debates, and interviews with policy makers and their staffs. It will interest all concerned with the history of liberal social policy in the postwar period.

Download or read book The Politics of Problem Definition written by David A. Rochefort and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the nexus of politics and policy development lies persistent conflict over where problems come from, what they signify, and, based on the answers to those questions, what kinds of solutions should be sought. Policy researchers call this process "problem definition." Written for both scholars and students, this book explains how and why social issues come to be defined in different ways, how these definitions are expressed in the world of politics, and what consequences these definitions have for government action and agenda-setting dynamics. The authors demonstrate in two theoretical chapters and seven provocative case studies how problem definition affects policymaking for high-profile social issues like AIDS, drugs, and sexual harassment as well as for problems like traffic congestion, plant closings, agricultural tax benefits, and air transportation. By examining the way social problems are framed for political discussion, the authors illuminate the unique impact of beliefs, values, ideas, and language on the public policymaking process and its outcomes. In so doing, they establish a common vocabulary for the study of problem definition; review and critique the insights of existing work on the topic; and identify directions for future research.

Download or read book The Handbook of Social Policy written by James Midgley and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2009 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Handbook of Social Policy' is a comprehensive examination of the development, implementation and impact of social policy. The contributors document the substantial body of knowledge about government social policies and their driving forces.

Download or read book American Unemployment written by Frank Stricker and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of unemployment and concepts surrounding it remain a mystery to many Americans. Frank Stricker believes we need to understand this essential thread in our shared past. American Unemployment is an introduction for everyone that takes aim at misinformation, willful deceptions, and popular myths to set the record straight: Workers do not normally choose to be unemployed. In our current system, persistent unemployment is not an aberration. It is much more common than full employment, and the outcome of elite policy choices. Labor surpluses propped up by flawed unemployment numbers have helped to keep real wages stagnant for more than forty years. Prior to the New Deal and the era of big government, laissez-faire policies repeatedly led to depressions with heavy, even catastrophic, job losses. Undercounting the unemployed sabotages the creation of government job programs that can lead to more high-paying jobs and full employment. Written for non-economists, American Unemployment is a history and primer on vital economic topics that also provides a roadmap to better jobs and economic security.

Download or read book Fraying Fabric written by James C. Benton and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decline of the U.S. textile and apparel industries between the 1940s and 1970s helped lay the groundwork for the twenty-first century's potent economic populism in America. James C. Benton looks at how shortsighted trade and economic policy by labor, business, and government undermined an employment sector that once employed millions and supported countless communities. Starting in the 1930s, Benton examines how the New Deal combined promoting trade with weakening worker rights. He then moves to the ineffective attempts to aid textile and apparel workers even as imports surged, the 1974 pivot by policymakers and big business to institute lowered trade barriers, and the deindustrialization and economic devastation that followed. Throughout, Benton provides the often-overlooked views of workers, executives, and federal officials who instituted the United States’ policy framework in the 1930s and guided it through the ensuing decades. Compelling and comprehensive, Fraying Fabric explains what happened to textile and apparel manufacturing and how it played a role in today's politics of anger.

Download or read book Commitment to Full Employment written by Aaron W. Warner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 15 papers collected in this book encompass important macroeconomic theories and policies espoused by 1996 Nobel laureate economist William S. Vickrey and his associates. Vickrey wrote a number of papers in the last few years of his life elucidating his "commitment to full employment" as a prerequisite for a decent standard of living for all. Drawing on the foundation of Vickrey's work, the contributors expand and elaborate on issues relative to full employment theory and policy, and on related macro-policy issues.

Download or read book Understanding Policy Fiascoes written by Paul 't Hart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A crisis of governance is widespread in western societies. Public administration is caught in a web of personal and organizational inter-dependencies that require continuous awareness and readjustment on the part of its practitioners. Understanding Policy Fiascoes applies policy analysis to come to terms with policy fiascoes, with a full appreciation of its limits. Despite the fact that policy failures may seem universal, they are in fact better understood as social, political and academic constructions. Bovens and 'tHart trace how and why certain episodes of public policymaking become labeled as "fiascoes." They highlight the analytical and political biases that shape our judgments of policy outcomes and the performance of policymakers and institutions. When put in their proper historical, institutional, and policymaking perspective, many policy fiascoes could easily have turned out quite differently. The authors show that the fact that these policy episodes unfolded as they did does not mean that they were inevitable. Careful analysis indicates that a whole series of variables, if not always manageable, can, through careful configurations of decisions, alter the course and outcomes of policies and programs, as well as the post-hoc judgments made about them. In examining public policymaking, certain questions arise: If public policymaking has failed so miserably, what does this tell us about the state of policy analysis? While policymakers are facing a crisis of legitimacy, policy analysis have been forced to reconsider the validity o their knowledge claims and the extent of their impact on the practice of policymaking. Understanding Policy Fiascoes will provide social scientists, policymakers, and political scientists with compelling perspectives on old problems and a path-breaking way to handle new problems.

Download or read book Work in America 2 volumes written by Carl E. Van Horn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-12-15 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive analysis of work and the workforce in the United States, from the Industrial Revolution to the era of globalization. This comprehensive two-volume reference book is the first to analyze the central role of work and the workforce in U.S. life from the Industrial Revolution through today's information economy. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—economics, public policy, law, human and civil rights, cultural studies, and organizational psychology—its 256 entries examine key events, concepts, institutions, and individuals in labor history. Entries also tackle tough contemporary questions that reflect the conflicts inherent in capitalism. What is the impact of work on families and communities? On minority and immigrant populations? How shall we respond to changing work roles and the growing influence of the transnational corporation? Work in America describes and evaluates attempts to address social and class issues—affirmative action, occupational health and safety, corporate management science, and trade unionism and organized labor—and offers the kind of comprehensive understanding needed to discover workable solutions.

Download or read book Globalization and the Politics of Pay written by Susan B. Hansen and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-23 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the American federal system, states actively compete for jobs, business investment, and factory locations. Labor costs have played an important role in such interstate competition since the days of the pre-Civil War plantation economy. In recent years, however, global economic trends have put added pressures on businesses and government to reduce labor costs. At least, that is what most politicians, the media, and the business community believe. Globalization and the Politics of Pay examines the economic, political, and social causes and consequences of declining wages in the United States. It challenges the conventional wisdom that globalization is to blame for the decline in workers' earnings. Susan B. Hansen presents a comprehensive analysis of the many factors affecting labor costs and concludes that many of them result from choices made by the states themselves through the laws and policies they enact. In addition, free-market ideologies and low voter turnout have had greater effects in keeping wages down than globalization. In fact, foreign trade and investment can actually result in higher pay in the state labor market. In this rigorous yet surprising study, Hansen develops new measures of state and federal labor costs to test competing theories of the consequences of reducing wages and benefits. Most economists would argue that higher labor costs cause higher unemployment, and that reducing labor costs will lead to higher levels of job creation. But citizens and elected officials must weigh any employment gains in lower-wage jobs against slower state economic growth, declining personal income, and a less-competitive position in international trade. Cutting state labor costs is shown to have adverse social consequences, including family instability, high crime rates, poverty, and low voter turnouts. The book concludes with policy recommendations for state governments trying to balance their need for more jobs with policies to enhance productivity, living standards, social stability, and international competitiveness.

Download or read book Interests and Institutions written by Robert H. Salisbury and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1992-10-15 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest and Institutions is a collection of essays written by distinguished political scientist Robert Salsibury, a leading analyst of interest group politics. He offers his theories on the workings and influence of groups, organizations, and individuals in many different areas of American politics.

Download or read book Workforce Development Politics written by Robert Giloth and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at local efforts to improve job training.

Download or read book Clinton s Legacy written by A. Waddan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-12-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Clinton left office there was little consensus even among Democrats as to the significance of his political legacy. He was keen to stress that enduring changes had been made to American society. Critics, however, were less convinced that Clintonism had developed an integrated vision of governance. This book examines whether the Clinton experience does illustrate the value of the New Democrat and Third Way agenda.

Download or read book Jobs for the Poor written by Timothy J. Bartik and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2001-06-11 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even as the United States enjoys a booming economy and historically low levels of unemployment, millions of Americans remain out of work or underemployed, and joblessness continues to plague many urban communities, racial minorities, and people with little education. In Jobs for the Poor, Timothy Bartik calls for a dramatic shift in the way the United States confronts this problem. Today, most efforts to address this problem focus on ways to make workers more employable, such as job training and welfare reform. But Bartik argues that the United States should put more emphasis on ways to increase the interest of employers in creating jobs for the poor—or the labor demand side of the labor market. Bartik's bases his case for labor demand policies on a comprehensive review of the low-wage labor market. He examines the effectiveness of government interventions in the labor market, such as Welfare Reform, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Welfare-to-Work programs, and asks if having a job makes a person more employable. Bartik finds that public service employment and targeted employer wage subsidies can increase employment among the poor. In turn, job experience significantly increases the poor's long-run earnings by enhancing their skills and reputation with employers. And labor demand policies can avoid causing inflation or displacing other workers by targeting high-unemployment labor markets and persons who would otherwise be unemployed. Bartik concludes by proposing a large-scale labor demand program. One component of the program would give a tax credit to employers in areas of high unemployment. To provide disadvantaged workers with more targeted help, Bartik also recommends offering short-term subsidies to employers—particularly small businesses and nonprofit organizations—that hire people who otherwise would be unlikely to find jobs. With experience from subsidized jobs, the new workers should find it easier to obtain future year-round employment. Although these efforts would not catapult poor families into the middle class overnight, Bartik offers a powerful argument that having a full-time worker in every household would help improve the lives of millions. Jobs for the Poor makes a compelling case that full employment can be achieved if the country has the political will and adopts policies that address both sides of the labor market. Copublished with the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Economic Research

Download or read book New Poverty Studies written by Judith G. Goode and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stock market euphoria and blind faith in the post cold war economy have driven the topic of poverty from popular and scholarly discussion in the United States. At the same time the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. The New Poverty Studies critically examines the new war against the poor that has accompanied the rise of the New Economy in the past two decades, and details the myriad ways poor people have struggled against it. The essays collected here explore how global, national, and local structures of power produce poverty and affect the material well-being, social relations and politicization of the poor. In updating the 1960s encounter between ethnography and U.S. poverty, The New Poverty Studies highlights the ways poverty is constructed across multiple scales and multiple axes of difference. Questioning the common wisdom that poverty persists because of the pathology, social isolation and welfare state "dependency" of the poor, the contributors to The New Poverty Studies point instead to economic restructuring and neoliberal policy "reforms" which have caused increased social inequality and economic polarization in the U.S. Contributors include: Georges Fouron, Donna Goldstein, Judith Goode, Susan B. Hyatt, Catherine Kingfisher, Peter Kwong, Vin Lyon-Callo, Jeff Maskovsky, Sandi Morgen, Leith Mullings, Frances Fox Piven, Matthew Rubin, Nina Glick Schiller, Carol Stack, Jill Weigt, Eve Weinbaum, Brett Williams, and Patricia Zavella. "These contributions provide a dynamic understanding of poverty and immiseration" —North American Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 1, Nov. 2001

Download or read book Stayin Alive written by Jefferson Cowie and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic account of how middle-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s, this wide-ranging cultural and political history rewrites the 1970s as the crucial, pivotal era of our time. Jefferson Cowie’s edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American musical, film, and TV lore—makes new sense of the 1970s as a crucial and poorly understood transition from New Deal America (with its large, optimistic middle class) to the widening economic inequalities, poverty, and dampened expectations of the 1980s and into the present. Stayin’ Alive takes us from the factory floors of Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, to the Washington of Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Cowie also connects politics to culture, showing how the big screen and the jukebox can help us understand how America turned away from the radicalism of the 1960s and toward the patriotic promise of Ronald Reagan. Cowie makes unexpected connections between the secrets of the Nixon White House and the failings of George McGovern campaign; radicalism and the blue-collar backlash; the earthy twang of Merle Haggard’s country music and the falsetto highs of Saturday Night Fever. Like Jeff Perlstein’s acclaimed Nixonland, Stayin’ Alive moves beyond conventional understandings of the period and brilliantly plumbs it for insights into our current way of life.

Download or read book The Hidden Welfare State written by Christopher Howard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1999-02-22 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-provided retirement pensions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. Basing his work on the histories of these four tax expenditures, Howard highlights the distinctive characteristics of all such policies. Tax expenditures are created more routinely and quietly than traditional social programs, for instance, and over time generate unusual coalitions of support. They expand and contract without deliberate changes to individual programs. Howard helps the reader to appreciate the historic links between the hidden welfare state and U.S. tax policy, which accentuate the importance of Congress and political parties. He also focuses on the reasons why individuals, businesses, and public officials support tax expenditures. The Hidden Welfare State will appeal to anyone interested in the origins, development, and structure of the American welfare state. Students of public finance will gain new insights into the politics of taxation. And as policymakers increasingly promote tax expenditures to address social problems, the book offers some sobering lessons about how such programs work.

Download or read book The Speaker and the Budget written by Daniel J. Palazzolo and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important changes in Congress in decades were the extensive congressional reforms of the 1970s, which moved the congressional budget process into the focus of congressional policy making and shifted decision making away from committees. This overwhelming attention to the federal budget allowed party leaders to emerge as central decision makers. Palazzolo traces the changing nature of the Speaker of the House's role in the congressional budget process from the passage of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, through the 100th Congress in 1988. As the deficit grew and budget politics became more partisan in the 1980s, the Speaker became more involved in policy-related functions, such as setting budget priorities and negotiating budget agreements with Senate leaders and the president. Consequently, the Speaker's role as leader of the institution was subordinated to his role as a party leader.