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Tue 29 Jun, 2004 11:28 pm
Did the GI Bill after WWII make all our prosperity possible?
I love my country, America. I remember the Marshall plan when I was a child and how it saved so many countries and lives after World War II. I also remember how so many short-sighted people were opposed to it.
However much I love my country and its generosity, I still know that we are also an altrustic country. We got back in return for the Marshall Plan money far more than we gave. We were the only major industrial nation whose industries and infrastructure were not largely destroyed by World War II. There was hardly anywhere else to go to purchase goods. It wasn't until the 1970s that many of the other countries began to catch up with America's help. Other than humanitarian generosity and business reasons, why did America contribute so much around the world? It was the beginning of the Cold War as a means to contain Communism. Thank you president Harry Truman.
A further comment, if I may. I also believe that the prosperity we are enjoying today results from The G. I. Bill of Rights: low cost housing and subsidized higher education. Without these, we would not have had the huge increase in the Middle Class and their status as homeowners. Even more importantly, we would not have created the tremendously expanded higher-educated classes. It was this government action and that generation of Americans that made our current advances in technology possible.
Why is it today that we have forgotten the huge, long term benefits of the G.I. Bills? Would govenment do it again today? Probably not, but we should. That's what investment in housing, education, etc. can do for a country and the world.
Today's G.I. Bill offers up to $50,000 dollars to those that qualify, which pays for the GI's college education. However, there is a big difference between the benefits offered now as inducements to attract military ENROLLMENTS and what happened with the G.I.Bill that compensated all GI, who were mostly draftees. World War II service people were given the G.I. Bill benefits AFTER the war was over to make up for the years lost. Of course, the ones who didn't make it home only received a $10,000 insurance policy for their beneficiaries, a small price for a life given to a country.
My main point is to call attention to the almost forgotten benefit of all those hundreds of thousands of G.I.s who were able to go to college that never would have otherwise. The education they got supported new
research and development that speeded up the invention, discovery rate
that made all our recent advancements and prosperity possible. Industry
had a vast pool of educated workers to use. That's why I asked why can't
we continue the same type of forward thinking policy now? The payback in the near future would be tremendous. Do we need a war to encourage that type of smart investment in the future?
Unfortunately, the low downpayment, low cost homes don't exist today as they did following the G.I. Bill. More and more families cannot afford to buy a house in some areas in the US. In the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley areas, the average person cannot even afford to buy a dump in a bad neighborhood much less something better.
The cost is extremely high with very high monthly mortgage payments. The high cost of housing, which probably has increased greater than almost any other cost of living item, has had an extremely negative affect on the American Family. It usually takes two incomes to afford a decent, not spacious home. This means that women have to work when they are starting familes just when most would rather stay home while their children are small. There are some women who are exceptions, of course, whose careers matter above all, but not the average working woman.
Government and private industry has done nothing substantial to rectify this problem while at the same time they berate mothers and families for
what is happening to the children. Private industry is in business to make money for themselves. Private industry shows little concern for what this pursuit does to America's future of the future of families in the U.S.
---BBB
Saluting the GI Bill's originator
Posted on Mon, Jun. 21, 2004
Saluting the GI Bill's originator
By John Brieden, American Legion
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, the original GI Bill, changed America. I can think of two ideal ways to mark the 60th anniversary of its signing tomorrow: Reinstitute its provisions for the nation's newest veterans, and award the Medal of Freedom posthumously to past American Legion National Commander Harry Colmery of Topeka, Kan., the man universally recognized as its author.
The Kansas lawyer's penciled outline of the GI Bill -- its pages now tanned with age -- are contained in a glass display case at the American Legion National Headquarters at Indianapolis. Since June 17, 2002, a plaque dedicated to Colmery's work has marked the suite -- Room 570 of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington -- where the World War I veteran penned his remarkable vision on Dec. 15, 1943.
Thanks to Rep. Chris Smith of New Hampshire (the House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman) and other members of Congress, the buying power of the GI Bill educational benefit has risen meteorically in the past couple of years.
The Medal of Freedom, however, remains a long-overdue tribute to my predecessor, a man of foresight and character whose contribution to veterans and to U.S. domestic policy has reverberated through generations and enhanced the lives of millions.
Is anyone more worthy of the Medal of Freedom than the veteran whose vision radiated the American dream? By providing home loans, business loans and enough money to cover the full cost of higher education, that is precisely what the original GI Bill did.
In 1939, according to Education Department estimates, nearly 1.5 million Americans were enrolled in the nation's institutions of higher learning. By the fall of 1947, as the late Michael J. Bennett wrote in When Dreams Came True, total enrollment had swelled to more than 2.3 million, with veterans accounting for 1.1 million -- nearly half of the nation's post-secondary enrollment.
Prior to President Roosevelt's signing of the GI Bill, elite private institutions were the province of the nation's elite. Thanks to the GI Bill, even the Ivy League's "hallowed halls" were opened to World War II veterans; Harvard's enrollment almost doubled from 2,750 in February 1947 to 5,000 in September 1947, according to Bennett's enlightening book. Most of the veterans might not have attended college at all without the educational assistance, which included books, fees and tuition.
Men and women of a variety of backgrounds, who served their nation honorably in the U.S. armed forces, made something more of themselves. Their accomplishments raised expectations for their children and for future generations.
Bennett used to deliver inspirational talks about the egalitarian consequences of the original GI Bill: the spawning of a middle class, the social and economic diversifying of college student bodies, and the unlocking of passageways to homeownership and entrepreneurship.
Bennett used to save for last a discussion of the original GI Bill as a cost-effective means of economic stimulus. One would see the proverbial light bulbs popping on above the heads of his audiences. He would point out that veterans repaid the GI Bill's $13.5 billion price tag by 1960. They repaid the hefty sum with higher taxes that they paid on their increased incomes.
Colmery's World War I generation came home to a nation that was unprepared to address its unique readjustment needs. There was not even a federal agency dedicated to the readjustment of veterans at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when World War I ended.
At a news conference, Colmery explained that the true motivation behind the GI Bill was to ensure that "Never again!" would America's veterans face the lack of educational and employment opportunities that his comrades had endured.
And the GI Bill worked! The noble impulse of Colmery and his American Legion comrades poured "the pursuit of Happiness" out of the history books and into the aspirations of our finest citizens.
The vision of Past National Commander Colmery, as he is known within the American Legion, changed America. He deserves the Medal of Freedom. What better way to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the GI Bill than to correct this long-overdue oversight?
Let's honor the man with "The Dream."
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