Huey Long's Share Our Wealth Proposals Argument

An Analysis of Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth”
The purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion concerning Huey Long’s speech, “Share Our Wealth,” delivered in a nationwide radio broadcast in April 1935, with respect to the Preamble to the United States Constitution and The Declaration of Independence. The point is made that while there are some similarities in the arguments and goals presented by Long and these two foundational documents, there are far more differences including most especially his views concerning income and inheritance limits as a means to achieving a perfect Union. An analysis of Long’s speech with respect to the Preamble and the Declaration of Independence drawing on relevant excerpts is followed by a summary of the research and key findings concerning these issues in the conclusion.
Preamble and “Share Our Wealth” by Huey Long
How does Long’s arguments relate to the Preamble?
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution is just 57 words long, but it succeeds in succinctly summarizing the numerous constitutional provisions and protections that follow. Although they are well known, it is important to present the Preamble in its entirety in order to evaluate its relationship to Long’s Share Our Wealth speech.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This inspiring words are reflected in Long’s speech when he calls for domestic tranquility and the promotion of the general welfare through the establishment of gradations of various minimum and maximum income levels that were intended to ensure all American families with the basic necessities of life, including homes, old age pensions, and most especially universal educational and employment opportunities. Viewed from a modern perspective, Long’s speech certainly does not rise to the oratory level of the Preamble, the contemporary sentiments, arguments and proposals he advanced were directly aligned with the views of many Americans during this challenging period in the nation’s history.
As noted above, both the Preamble and Long’s arguments include provisions for domestic tranquility and the promotion of the general welfare of the nation’s citizenry. Long’s arguments, though, are in direct opposition to the Preamble’s goals concerning securing “the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” since Long calls for limits on the amount of money Americans can earn and how much they can inherit. While these arguments may in fact contribute to “a more perfect Union” from Long’s perspective, placing any types of limits of the amount of money Americans can earn and pass on to subsequent generations smacks of downright anti-Americanism today. Given these basic differences in arguments, there is little room for the Preamble to support Long’s arguments, but there is some modest support for some of his views as noted below.
What are both their arguments and how can the Preamble support Long’s argument?
Both Long’s speech and the Preamble make it clear that creating a perfect Union requires a number of guarantees that are either directly related or involve sufficient overlap to suggest broad-based similarities in outcomes concerning what constitutes a perfect Union. In essence, this is where the support for Long’s arguments end in the Preamble. Indeed, the Preamble also makes it clear that it is essential to codify these guarantees in a foundational document in order to preserve and protect them for future generations. It is fortunate that the Founding Fathers had the foresight to include the Preamble and the provisions that followed in the U.S. Constitution because otherwise if Long had his way, the United States may well have ended up resembling a national Ben & Jerry’s where no one would be allowed to earn more than others according to various arbitrary and arcane formulas.
In fact, the arguments in the Preamble and Long’s speech diverge on a number of important points. For example, while the Preamble calls for the provision of the common defense and the promotion the general Welfare, it does not call for the executive branch to feed and clothe every American citizen who may be hungry or need a new suit. By very sharp contrast, Long argues that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inability or seeming unwillingness to provide these guarantees further exacerbated the desperate economic plight in which many American families found themselves in 1933.
This baffling argument was despite Long’s concession in his speech that the president had already borrowed billions of dollars to provide short-term relief for American families. In this regard, Long first complains that “Instead of his promises, the only remedy that Mr. Roosevelt has prescribed is to borrow more money” followed by his objection to the burden that the interest payments on this debt would represent for the current and even next generation of American taxpayers. These objections were advanced despite Long’s call for universal higher education at the government’s expense. For instance, Long concluded his Share Our Wealth speech by proposing that “there should be an education for every youth in this land and that no youth would be dependent upon the financial means of his parents in order to have a college education.”
Presumably, Long expected the enormous amounts of money that would be needed for this proposal to fall from the sky or greater taxes on the wealth (and there would be far fewer of these in America if Long had his way) because the only viable alternative would be for the government to foot the bill for the hundreds of billions of dollars this initiative would require, a proposal that was directly opposite from his previous arguments against the existing amount of national debt and the need to reduce government borrowing.
Finally, Long concludes his increasingly fallacious arguments by emphasizing that, “And with it all, there stalks a slimy specter of want, hunger, destitution, and pestilence, all because of the fact that in the land of too much and of too much to wear, our president has failed in his promise to have these necessities of life distributed into the hands of the people who have need of them.” It is reasonable to suggest that this same “slimy specter” has stalked many American families since Long delivered his speech and the problem remains salient today, but the Preamble and the constitutional guarantees that follow have done far more to solve these problems that Long’s misguided arguments could ever have accomplished.
The Declaration of Independence and “Share Our Wealth” by Huey Long
Discussion concerning how these two are related
At 1322 words, the Declaration of Independence is substantially longer than the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, but the majority of the Declaration concerns the rationale in its support including the various reasons why the Americans colonies should be free of British rule. The essential elements of the Declaration are contained in its concluding section where it states in part:
[T]hese united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States [and] that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
In reality, there are even fewer points of convergence and overlap between Long’s Share Our Wealth speech and the Declaration of Independence compared to the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the only point on which the Founding Fathers and Long appear to agree concerns the right to establish commerce and “do all other Act and Things” that are needed to promote and preserve the general welfare of the American people. The latter phrase was intentional nebulous since the framers of the Declaration could not envision everything that would be needed in the country’s future, but it is also reasonable to suggest that they clearly did not envision Long’s seemingly well-intentioned but misguided proposals for a national welfare state.
What are their arguments and how can the Declaration support Long’s argument?
Besides the calls for the specific rights contained in the concluding section stated above, the overarching arguments included in the Declaration of Independence relate to the fundamental right of the United States to control its own destiny and the need to dissolve the existing bonds between the newly founded U.S. and Great Britain. By contrast, Long does not call for the succession of Louisiana or any other state in a second Civil War, and he clearly does not advocate any dissolution of the existing bonds between the states and the national government. Rather, Long’s arguments can be summed up in his enumerated proposals as follows:
· Number One: All American families should own homesteads that are equal in value to not less than one third the average family wealth (an amount equal to about $5,000 at the time);
· Number Two: No American family should own more than three hundred times the $5,000 average family wealth amount meaning that no American family should be allowed to accumulate more than $5 million in homestead value (in fact, Long even goes so far as to argue, “We think that’s too much to allow them to own, but at least it’s extremely conservative.”
· Number Three: Every American family must have incomes equal to at least one third of the average family income and adequate old-age pensions paid for by taxing the wealthy and their children through higher taxes on inheritances.
· Number Four: The fulfillment of President Lincoln’s promise to American veterans to provide them with the care they need including the payment of the controversial soldiers’ bonus from World War I as well as free universal higher education, again presumably paid for through higher taxes on a dwindling number of wealthy Americans.
While these proposals may have seemed reasonable to many Americans when they were introduced by Long in 1933 when people were still struggling to overcome the worst depression in the nation’s history, they are not supported on any point except perhaps the provision of care to the nation’s veterans since the Declaration states that the nation should “have full Power to levy War [and] conclude Peace.”
Moreover, the Declaration of Independence is a call for action to create and sustain a new country while Long’s speech is a call for disincentives of various types that would inevitably harm the country. For instance, in the 85 intervening years since Long’s speech, there have been large numbers of minority millionaires and billionaires created in the United States notwithstanding the overall disparities that continue to adversely affect these demographic segments. Placing limits on how much American families could earn in 1933 would probably have helped some minority members more quickly recover from the Great Depression by guaranteeing them a minimum income and household, but it is unlikely that those who went on to succeed socially and economically would have been motivated to do so if they knew their income levels would be capped at a certain point.
Likewise, the same disincentives would also apply to all affluent American families who create jobs and wealth. After all, what is the point of sacrificing and struggling to achieve greatness if the laws of the country stipulate that people can only be so great and no more because it would violate some basic principle of fairness? Again, and notwithstanding the disparities and inequities that continue to mar the American landscape, the proposals set forth in Long’s Share Our Wealth speech were not adopted since most of them (except the old-age pensions and care for veterans) transcended the national government’s authority as delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Conclusion
In 1933, the flamboyant Huey Long made a nationwide speech in a radio program entitled, “Share Our Wealth” that made several proposals that were intended to reduce the income gap between the wealthy and poor and ensure that all American families enjoyed the benefits of a minimum income and a household based on a formula that ensured no one could earn or bequest more than $5 million. The research showed that there were few points of convergence and support for Long’s proposals in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution or Declaration of Independence beyond the need to provide for the “general Welfare” and exercise the rights needed for this purpose. It is reasonable to conclude that if Long’s proposals had been implemented 85 years ago, this paper would not be written on a personal computer using a word processing program and would more likely have been typed on a manual typewriter if ribbons were available because Bill Gates et al. would not have been motivated to do the things they did to create and develop this industry.