It’s surprising how much discussion of economic models was compressed in the last fifty years (I’d think as a result of Cold War sorting but it really only got going in the late '70s as the business community began really politically moving). You can find frank discussion like this in the planning for the New Deal:
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15862.html
We were very close to a jobs guarantee bill in the '70s but it was weakened and then ultimately squashed under the Carter administration as people started questioning if the Keynesian framework still worked.