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Great Depression Public Life

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Great Depression Public Life
Public Life
The economic setting during the Great Depression that is described above provides a general synopsis of the corporate instability during this period in U.S. history. Nonetheless, the data fails to convey the numerous hardships and suffrage felt by U.S. citizens and those impacted throughout the world by the crisis. A quick overview of the anecdotes of the time are useful in analyzing the demand for overtime pay regulation by the American public that is presented within the discussion segment of this document.
The illustrative narrative of individuals and families include stories where damming winters with temperatures 40 degrees below zero were faced without clothes or shelter and just enough food to keep them from starving. A
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Adding to the concoction of social dilemmas faced by Americans at the time was the uncertainty accompanied with a new presidential administration at the inception for the depression.
Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), America's 31st president, took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression. In February 1931, Herbert Hoover lectured the nation on poor relief and insisted that “the basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self-help in the community” (Edsforth, 2003, p. 47). Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression as the 32nd President (1933-1945). By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery through reform programs which included Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the
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The “Wagner Act, Walsh-Healy Act, and the Fair Labor and Standards Act (FLSA)” initiated many employers to pay workers higher wages (Edsforth, 2003, p. 243). These policies that were integrated into the FLSA was largely due to the income inequality in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The ideology of overtime pay was a public policy brought about by organized labor due to the historical government failure in addressing working hours and working conditions of workers, and prevent exploitation by their employers before the New Deal. Current legislation on overtime requires employers to pay their employees "time-and-a-half wages (one and a half times the employee's regular hourly wage) for all hours worked over the national overtime limit of 40 hours per week” (Minimum-Wage.org,

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