CRAIGforCONGRESS

Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2006
GOVERNMENT
The Department of Labor



Congress should

  • Abolish the Department of Labor

The unemployed will always be with us. Or so we seem to be reminded by the current recession, as the unemployment rate surpasses 7 percent, its highest level in more than five years. But why should this be the case? After all, government at least since the New Deal has assumed responsibility for combating unemployment. Yet the American economy appears no more free of the sharp unemployment peaks that accompany recessions and depressions than before the 1930s.

Could it be that government, far from being the solution, is actually the problem?

This is the sober conclusion of The Independent Institute’s new book, Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in 20th Century America. The authors are Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, both Professors of Economics at Ohio University who have served on the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. With a foreword by Martin Bronfenbrenner (late Professor of Economics, Duke University), this volume amasses relentless and devastating empirical evidence that the major cause of high unemployment during the twentieth century in the United States, both cyclical and secular, is government itself.



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