I hadn’t heard of it either, until I stumbled across this a few weeks ago.
I’m surprised this isn’t more widely taught in schools — it certainly plants a flag for the idea of the welfare state, and linking the survival of democracy with some minimum amount of shared prosperity.
An idea that Britain took and ran with in establishing the NHS and other programs under a Labour government after the election of ‘45, while the USA obviously chose a different path. (Tying access to healthcare to employment, for instance.)
If FDR had lived to see the end of the war, might this domestic agenda have been pushed harder? Did Truman oppose this in some way, or did he just get distracted by other events?
Questions I don’t know the answer to, but this certainly feels like a path not taken.
