5 FDR Quotes On Poverty That Still Totally Hold Up

Roosevelt would have had a great Twitter account

It’s really quite surprising that Franklin D. Roosevelt was only considered important enough for the tiniest of American currency, because he was one hell of a President. Not only did he battle polio — POLIO — he also was a crusader for what he called “the forgotten man,” i.e. the poor.

Like waaaaaay before it was cool.

And get this — he didn’t even grow up poor! He just knew that poor people needed care and then talked about it and tried to help them.

As the Presidential race heats up (bye, Scott Walker! See you in Hell!) and New York City and other locations around the country fight for a higher minimum wage (with which even the current President is on board), it’s important to remember that:

a.) the idea of raising up the poor is neither new nor radical, and

b.) there’s a lot of really respected leadership that spoke on it decades ago.

Talking about ending poverty by paying people a living wage is hardly an idea pioneered by Millennials and socialists. It’s been touted as a solution be some very, very beloved public figures throughout history.

Like the dude on the dime.

FDR was on that tip properly early, and that some of his quotes on the subjects of labor, poverty, and access are still right as hell.

Just look at some of these quotes.

We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people — whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth — is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure. [Source]

BOOOOOOM.

FDR was not ok with a nation where a large portion of the population couldn’t afford a home or food. He had the audacity to expect more.

Which is actually kind of radical even today; we tend to just assume that some people will always be homeless, and that poverty is a necessary evil in our economy.

Check out this one:

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. [Source]

Speak on it, Franklin.

Or how about this one, which you can whip out any time some ding-a-ling on Twitter tells you that that minimum wage was never supposed to be a living wage:

It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. [Source]

He was saying this shit in 1933 and you know what? If a politician said it today, it would be INCENDIARY.

Oh wait. A politician is saying it. And people are saying he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell at the Presidency.

And yet…and yet a President did, one time, espouse actual, real-life, progressive ways to end poverty. Odd.

One thing that was great about FDR was that he understood — and talked a lot about — the ways in which poverty brings everyone down, not just the poor. Yeah, that’s right. He didn’t fuck with that “trickle-down economics” garbage or make the vaguest, most inactionable promises of all time. Instead, he focused on building the economic base from the bottom up, a tactic which is show to work by actual numbers and experience.

Revo-fucking-lutionary.

FDR knew that no one’s bootstraps are thick enough to pull themselves out of the kind of poverty people were facing (and continue to face today!) — and he didn’t just talk about it! He did something about it.

Instead of waiting around for things to get better, or doling out money to the people at the top, he created actual programs gave people jobs and paid them money. He guided the country through arguably the hardest economic period in our short history with this empathetic, all-inclusive worldview, and shared it with everyone who would listen.

Did he catch some shit for it? Of course he did. The New Deal was called everything from socialism (heaven forbid) to a job-ruiner (lol what jobs) to the end of the United States as we knew it. It was too much spending! It would never work!

But you know what it went down as in the history books? The thing that bailed out the US economy.

Why? Because FDR knew that not only was all that spending and focusing on the poor sound economics, it was also sound being-a-person-ism. And not only that, it was the way to build a stronger, happier, more productive nation, generally.

Here’s one more FDR quote for good measure:

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. [Source]

And you know what’s really crazy? He didn’t even like, whisper this stuff to his wife or say it only to a room full of wealthy donors. Most of these statements he made to the entire country, gathered around their radios, dying to hear what truthbombs the POTUS was going to drop next.

So the next time someone on Facebook starts kvetching about how the solutions to poverty aren’t handouts or even higher wages, or you hear a politician say that paying people more money does’t help right the economy, just lay down a bite of sweet FDR knowledge.

They’ll think you’re quoting some radical lefty from a socialist group, but really, you’ll be quoting one of the dead white dudes that’s on their money.