Business

BUSINESS • ■ ■ Sometimes you wonder. No more evil- intentioned law was ever enacted than the late President Roosevelt’s GI Bill of Rights. The returning GI was to be h·apped by loss-leader government loans and insurance, and once a wel- fare state had been carpentered around him, the rest of American society was to be pulled inside it.

Yet what happened? The GI spotted the Bill’s gaudy provision for a 5 per cent down-payment on new homes, and, seizing a lovely girl by the hand, danced off to the suburbs to have first, second and third babies. The down- payment went against all mortgage- lending experience; it was an economic monstrosity. But it also changed an aging Republic into a young one, and the New Deal bribes dwindled to nothing beside one of the great booms of modern times. Another such was the Full Employ- ment Act of 1946, a brass-knuckled at- tempt to make inflation a permanent national policy. To keep the furnace trimmed and cherry-red, it set up a President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

JM

About the Author

Jonathan Mitchell

BUSINESS • ■ ■ Sometimes you wonder. No more evil- intentioned law was ever enacted than the late President Roosevelt’s GI Bill of Rights. The returning GI was to be h·apped by loss-leader government loans and insurance, and once a wel- fare state had been carpentered around him, the rest of American society was to be pulled inside it.

Yet what happened? The GI spotted the Bill’s gaudy provision for a 5 per cent down-payment on new homes, and, seizing a lovely girl by the hand, danced off to the suburbs to have first, second and third babies. The down- payment went against all mortgage- lending experience; it was an economic monstrosity. But it also changed an aging Republic into a young one, and the New Deal bribes dwindled to nothing beside one of the great booms of modern times. Another such was the Full Employ- ment Act of 1946, a brass-knuckled at- tempt to make inflation a permanent national policy. To keep the furnace trimmed and cherry-red, it set up a President’s Council of Economic Advisers.