Should the USA adopt FDR's second bill of rights proposed in 1944?

Sounds like a recipe for economic ruin and stagnation.  Exceptions would be nations with large natural resource monopolies, which they can live off.   But then look at what happens to, say, Venezuela when the price of oil drops.  They now have toilet paper shortages.

It is important also to note the qualitative difference between these "rights" and the rights of the Bill of Rights.  The latter are what we call "negative-rights", or the right to be unimpeded in some liberty.   So the 1st Amendment does not give us a right to a free government-provided church or press.   It says merely that the government shall not infringe on your ability to practice religion or publish a newspaper.  But building and running a church or press is up to you.  Similarly, the 2nd amendment does not require the government to give everyone a gun, but merely says the government will not infringe on that right.   These are all negative rights.

A positive right, such as FDR's list, is different.  It is not merely a liberty, but an entitlement, that must be paid for somehow, generally from higher taxes.  Once we start doing that then we run into all the economic flaws of socialism, not well-known in FDR's time, but now far better known to economists.

Read other related questions on Quora:

• If Roosevelt had lived and his second bill of rights was enacted, how would America's history have changed?
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