Back in the 1920s Edward Filene–among other things, founder of what was the Twentieth Century Fund and is now the Century Foundation–argued that America did not need any variety of European “socialism”. Without bureaucratic rules to bind them, America’s large, efficient corporations would create lots of jobs. And because the large, efficient corporations of America would would find themselves in a labor-scarcity environment and so would provide for their workers as a result of market pressures better outcomes than what the workers of Europe had to gain through the ballot and the threat of the bullet–high wages, reasonable hours, pensions, sick days, health insurance (cough). Edward Filene’s vision did not rule America in the remainder of the twentieth century, but it did have a powerful influence on what America became.
Now David Frum is here to ring the curtain down on Edward Filene’s “Welfare Capitalism” and its impact:
Continue reading “David Frum on the Death Knell of “Welfare Capitalism”, and Where We Should Go Next” →