Winning the war of ideas will be vital if we ever hope to implement such a successful program again.

Many thinking people are surprised that the lessons of the Great Depression have been so easily forgotten as the rich world struggles to get economies back on track after the worst recession since the 1930s. Keynes himself would have been surprised, because he thought the end of laissez-faire economics was well on its way even before the Great Depression. He wrote an essay in 1930 to that end called "The End of Laissez Faire," nicely summarized in a new book by Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, which predated his magnum opus, The General Theory, by six years.

But laissez-faire rose again with a vengeance under the articulate, if simplistic, preachings of Milton Friedman. It remains a guiding principle today partly because of the very allure of its simple core principle. For those of us who believe government is needed not merely to tame capitalism but to make it work, as well as to provide for a decent society that rewards all fairly and promotes social cohesion and optimism, we should remind ourselves how profoundly appealing laissez-faire is and what a battle we face. It is a set of elegant principles, while the correct critiques of it are ugly by comparison. Also, it was in the 1920s, and is today, the philosophy of the rich and powerful, not a small matter.

The rise, momentary fall in 2008, and rise again of laissez faire is therefore not really a stunning historical event. Fiscal stimulus, the main legacy of John Maynard Keynes, was derided when President Obama got an $800 billion stimulus passed. Then it was said by many that it didn’t either save or create new jobs. Meanwhile, Europe is overwhelmed by the disease of austerity economics. Only Germany stays above water based on exports made cheap by the low value of the euro -- something it would not be able to enjoy if it were independent of the Eurozone and had its own currency. Austerity economics has spread to the U.S. in the form of allegedly sensible budget balancing commissions that are not sensible at all. They helped foment the pressure to balance the budget as soon as possible, even with unemployment at nearly 8 percent.

It is not only fiscal stimulus that is derided. Programs to spur job growth have been limited to relatively modest infrastructure investments and tax cuts, especially payroll tax cuts. Less obvious, the push by mainstream economists to explain income inequality almost solely in terms of inadequate education is deeply misleading. Such an expalantion neglects the low minimu wage, persistently high unemployment rates, the failure to implement labor organization laws, and on.

There have been new programs. A modest investment in infrastructure and tax cuts. We do have a healthcare bill, which we should applaud on balance. But none of this compares to the adventure of the New Deal, and in particular the Works Progress Administration, whose anniversary we are celebrating today. The WPA went out and hired Americas to do jobs, including building infrastructure. By some estimates, some 8 million jobs were created.

We need a wide range of New Deal ideas made contemporary: higher minimum wages, living wages, aggressive public investment, green investments, and on. Government will be the generator of these jobs. Some, but very few, argue we need outright public employment programs, just like the WPA.

What made that happen then? A more severe recession than now, for one thing. A far bolder president, for another.   

But the ideology of laissez faire still had to be defeated. Laissez faire was not mentioned by Smith, Ricardo, or Mathus, Keynes wrote. “Even the idea is not present in any form in these authors,” he said in “The End of Laissez Faire.” He went on, the public had “come to regard the simplified hypothesis as health and the further complications as disease.”

Keynes blindly believed reason would prevail. The many over-simplifcations of laissez faire would become obvious, he optimistically thought. Sane criticism would prevail over simple ideology. For a while, he was right—a pretty long while. Arguably a version of Keynesian progressivism, which even included fixed exchange rates and plenty of social programs, especially in Europe, prevailed until the 1970s. Then it turned to over-simplifications and scapegoats, mainly driven by the painful inflationary economy of the 1970s.

Many are enamored of the idea that a revitalized right wing of effective think tanks, lobbying, and media disinformation ended progresssivm in the U.S. But that misreads history. Margaret Thatcher introduced stern anti-Keynesian policies well before the U.S. did at the start of the 1980s. Germany was anti-Keynesian throughout the 1970s. Ideas matter, and the acceptance of the idea of laissez faire regained the upper hand.

As we battle in memory of the marvelous WPA, we should keep in mind how intensely compelling laissez faire ideology is. It has captured, without their really noticing, the hearts and minds of most orthodox economists. As usual, it has the rich mostly on its side. If we recognize it is a tough, ongoing battle to defeat the simple version of it, we will fight it better. In the meantime, we can rejoice in how well we once did. That is the proof that we can win. American history can be repeated.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick is the Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s Rediscovering Government initiative and author of Age of Greed. 

Capping federal spending at 21 percent of GDP is arbitrary, short-sighted, and wrong for America.

The Simpson-Bowles budget balancing plan seems to have become the common-sense standard for dealing with America’s future budget deficits. I’d say this move toward the right is dangerous to the future of the nation and essentially cruel—far more dangerous than the level of the deficit over the next 15 years. The commission, formally known as the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, appointed by President Obama, achieves its deficit reduction by reducing government spending to do two-thirds of the job and raising taxes to do only one-third of the job. Even 50-50 would not be fair in such a low-tax nation. The commission proposed cuts in Social Security benefits of 15 percent for medium earners, for example.

But easily the most short-sighted objective is to hold federal spending to 21 percent of Gross Domestic Product into the future. How did they get this number? It is roughly the average level of federal spending since 1970. This is not a reasonable standard—it is not even a way to think about the issue. So where did the idea originally come from? The answer: the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

Now our most respected elder statesmen of the economy, Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett, are endorsing the 21 percent level in recent editorials. It may have been missed in Buffett’s piece, which endorsed a 30 percent tax on the rich, and correctly so. But he said it plain as day: “Our government’s goal should be to…spend about 21 percent of G.D.P.”

Oh my. Did they do any analysis at all about what that level would mean for retired, sick, and middle-income-to-poor Americans? Did it occur to them how vastly the U.S. economy has changed over those years? There are many more retirees, health care is more expensive and more extensive, the U.S. has chosen to fight expensive wars, and its infrastructure and educational needs are dire.

The words of the wise oracles should not be taken seriously. One wonders whether Volcker would have run the Federal Reserve or Buffett picked stock on such skimpy analysis. They present no evidence, nor do I think they have done any research or even reading that shows that a 21 percent spending level will make the economy more efficient than, say, a 24 percent level of spending. 

And they beat their chests as the exemplars of responsibility in an otherwise irresponsible America. Moreover, Pete Peterson, of course, is now financing a road tour for Bowles and Simpson to fight their great moral battle to get America’s budget under control—as a reminder, not by raising taxes significantly but by cutting social entitlements significantly. America cannot be run by men like these. America’s great moral battle is for social justice and adequate federal investment.

The heroic and correct analysis of the Simpson-Bowles plan has been done by Paul Van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Some think of the CBPP as left-wing, but it is only mildly so. It makes deficit reduction a top priority, and its analysis is typically excellent. 

Van de Water concludes that keeping federal spending at 21 percent of GDP would require deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over time, as well as virtually all other federal programs. He wrote this before the Budget Control Act and the sequester we now face, but its principles still apply.

Moreover, he reminds us that the Brookings Institution held panels on the future budget, and in general, centrists on those panels agreed that spending as a percent of GDP should be 23 to 25 percent 20 years from now. He thinks the Simpson-Bowles plan is simply wrong for America. In truth, Social Security is inadequate today, and Medicaid tragically so. The latter in particular needs building up.

And then the 21 percenters generally have the audacity to demand more investment in education and infrastructure. How?

Centrists had better get together and remind America, with analysis, pragmatism, and a keen sense of justice and America’s future, how deeply wrongheaded most of the basic principles of Simpson-Bowles are. This thinking has led to today’s fiscal cliff, and as a blueprint for the future it is both damaging to the economy and cruel for most Americans.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick is the Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s Rediscovering Government initiative and author of Age of Greed.