ABSTRACT
To rally a reluctant nation, the New Deal laid out a list of promises: guarantees that the federal government would make to the people. The promise of full employment has thus become a political albatross. The deepest and costliest scar left by the New Deal was the promise of full employment. After that time, employment has been treated as a responsibility of the federal government. Every new administration goes down to Washington—or more likely, arises from the shadows in Washington—with the knowledge that it will fail to deliver on this promise. This chapter considers this to be a great danger to American political institutions. The powers that be, and which claim responsibility for people wellbeing and their livelihoods, can not help them to find work. Including the millions—estimated at five million—Americans who languish in prisons and jail or on probation, government have more the eleven million Americans who do not have work.
