Raise the top marginal tax rates, strengthen social safety nets (social security, welfare, etc). Use Congressional authority to raise wage floors (minimum wage, threshold for overtime), thereby pushing corporate profits into labor's pocket. Perhaps even reduce the work week by 8-16 hours, considering the massive productivity gains over the last 40 years, which has gone primarily to corporate profits.
The bedrock of corporate profit is consumer demand.
We're in a vicious cycle where people are unemployed/underemployed -> consumer demand is depressed (because they have no money) -> companies don't hire (because nobody will buy their goods) -> people are unemployed
You have to break the cycle by first propping up consumer demand, and the most direct way to that is by giving consumers money to spend.
And he would've succeeded if he was willing to blow up the deficit further.
That actually happened with our entry into WW2, sharp increases in spending and hiring, and immediate end to the Great Depression (note that weapons, ships, planes and the like are about useful to a peacetime economy as digging holes in the ground--the key is you need to hire a lot of people to make them)
And exactly how the WW2 recovery happened. Government created demand for products, and deficit spent until the economy roared back. Subsequent gov't surpluses from increased tax revenue were then used to pay down deficit.
Uh dropping the Hours for full time work. The DOL made the time and a half for work over 40 hrs per week to increase labor demand. Imagine a world where it's 6 hrs per day or 30 per week. More people would be employed. And since those hours are paid piece wise no ones hourly wage would decrease. That's how the labor force could increase.
Your idea of Scandinavian democratic socialism seems to be rather misguided. You probably haven't lived here?
- Top marginal tax rates are not that different -- the difference is more in that the higher tax rates kick in earlier in Scandinavia, which is necessary because average earnings are lower. In the U.S., the high earners pay a larger proportion of tax revenue than Scandinavia. US: the top 2.7 % pays 51.6 % of federal income tax [0] while in Finland, the top 3 % pays 22.4 % of income tax revenue [1]
- Wage floors: Scandinavian countries don't have a legal minimum wage at all [2]. The minimum compensation for each job is negotiated in collective bargaining per sector, and several U.S. states already have higher and more broadly enforced minimum wages than what these per-sector agreements are in Scandinavian countries.
- Corporate profits to labor's pocket: compensation per employee as percentage of GDP at factor cost per person employed is not substantially different in the U.S. from northern EU. [3] Yes, it's somewhat falling because of technological development and increased regulation and taxation everywhere.
Overall, the difference in fact is that in many areas, the Scandinavian countries have less socialism, more market economy - more open competition and less protectionism. It seems that you think the Scandinavian success is socialism, when in fact it is neoliberalism. [4]
Again, have you actually understood how we here in Nordic countries have arrived in this model?
Your approach looks like a cargo cult to me: it lacks understanding of the basic mechanisms, and instead focuses on some external insignia and symbols.
Yes, I've studied the economic principals underlying Nordic socioeconomic success. Again, I believe other methods will need to be undertaken to achieve the same outcome, due to the drastic cultural and economic differences between Nordic countries and the United States.
That's not cargo culting. That's adapting to your circumstances.
Scandinavian democratic socialism.
EDIT: This is just to start.