This is an important point:
The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression because of not one but a combination of misguided policies that made it harder for employers to create jobs and harder for consumers to buy things. Keynesian commentators talk as if FDR made a single key mistake, like not incurring big enough budget deficits. This ignores the tripling of the tax burden during the New Deal period (1933-1940). Also ignored is the fact that New Deal spending was mainly paid for by the middle class and the poor, because the biggest revenue generator for the federal government was the excise tax on beer, cigarettes, chewing gum, and other cheap pleasures disproportionately enjoyed by the middle class and the poor. Moreover, several New Deal laws made everything — especially food — more expensive when Americans desperately needed bargains.
There’s a lot more.
Notions that the New Deal didn’t work because they didn’t do enough of it (particularly based on the absurd notion that the war was “the New Deal on steroids” which was why it did) are just the kind of rewriting of history that I was talking about.
[Update on Tuesday morning]
There are few things I enjoy more than dealing with history-challenged simpletons who stupidly assume that because one doesn’t accept the gospel that FDR Saved Us From The Breadlines, that one must therefore think that Herbert Hoover was (in the parlance of the times) the cats pajamas, and that if we’d only stuck with his (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, all would have been well with the world. Larry Kudlow had a guest on his show who made this idiotic assumption last week, when he talked about Larry’s “hero,” Herbert Hoover. Kudlow quickly put him in his place (as I did here with my own idiot in comments). It’s the same (or at least related) pigheaded mindlessness and false choice that causes people to foolishly assume that because I’m down on Democrats I must be a Republican.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Michael Barone, on the real lessons of the Great Depression. Of course, those pushing “stimuli” don’t want to learn the real lessons, because it would remove much of the justification for their efforts to grow government and take over more and more of our lives as individuals.
[Bumped to Tuesday morning]
http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams/the-national-ponzi-scheme.html
Walter Williams is so much fun to listen to.
Obviously, it simply hasn’t been tried by the right people yet…
But a lot of what they’re trying has been attempted before with bad results. Perhaps they think that doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a different outcome isn’t the definition of insanity after all, at least not while “The One” is in charge.
It’s a pity then all those millions of people
abandoned Herbert Hoover just when after
3 years his policies were going to work.
It’s a greater pity that all those millions of voters
went on to believe in the Democratic party
for decades.
Amazing, really
You mean like the ones who believed in communism in the Soviet Union for 70 years Jack?
That was amazing too.
Don’t you know that the criteria for how valid a system is is how many people “believed” in it? Never mind the actual evidence of what effects the implementation of this system had on things. Evidence? Facts? Reality? What’s that? We are but spirits in truth — nothing that happens to our so-called physical form really matters!
Okay, now I almost know what it’s like to be a long-time cannabis smoker, all without having to take a toke. I’m still waiting for the final revelation of how we are all stardust, connected by silvery glistening cables of psychic love. Maybe I have to listen to more Obama broadcasts…
It’s a pity then all those millions of people
abandoned Herbert Hoover just when after
3 years his policies were going to work.
No one said that Hoover was doing anything right, you moron. His policies were a disaster, too.
Not sure if you are saying this, and I apologize if you’re not, but the idea that WWII was proof that Keynesian economic theory worked is not new. My Macro-Econ teacher in college was a firm believer in that idea at least as far back as ’86. It jarred me when he said it then, and the argument continues to amaze me to this day.
So, I’m not sure I’d argue that this is revisionism. I think, rather, that the idea has been a core Leftist belief for decades. Perhaps since WWII itself.
One should also note that Hoover’s policies weren’t all that different from FDR’s in terms of massive intervention in the market. The idea that Hoover “did nothing” is yet another example of historical revisionism glossing over inconvenient facts.
According to Keynesian theory, stagflation is an impossibility.
Carter proved him wrong. Looks like Jimmy Jr. is going to repeat the lesson.
Let’s keep in mind that while Hoover did a lot of damage, Roosevelt did very little to undo the worst of the damage. For example, the Smoot Hawley act, a Republican action which in 1930 created a global trade war, probably was the single most significant contribution that the Hoover administration made to the Great Depression, and enabled the Nazis to take over Germany. So when FDR took over in 1933, did he reverse one of the worst excesses of the Hoover era? Eventually, he did in the final years of the Second World War, about ten years later.
How come the Left always preaches ‘sustainability’ or ‘it’s for the children’ … until it comes to their economic plans?
So what is your proposal for getting out of the hole then? Lowering taxes? W did that and it didn’t seem to work well did it? Doing nothing? Some action…
@Godzilla “Lowering taxes? W did that and it didn’t seem to work well did it? Doing nothing? Some action…”
I think it is generally accepted that tax cuts, and in particular those that change incentives, do in fact spur short term growth, and this includes the Bush tax cuts.
And I don’t hear anyone saying we should do nothing. How about temporary lowering of the payroll tax and corporate tax rates, combined with government spending–but not permanent expansions of Medicare, modifed welfare, transfer payments, and giveaways to the states?
Godzilla, doing nothing is an acceptable course to me. My take is that if Hoover had done nothing rather than the protectionist course he actually took, we would have just treated the recession of 1929 as a serious recession with unusually high unemployment, not the most significant economic event of the 20th Century.
Well Karl, doing nothing was what Lord Russel did when the Great Irish Famine hit. We know how well that turned out. I’m not saying spending the equivalent of another Iraq war is a viable stimulus, but I believe a stimulus would be helpful nonetheless.
doing nothing was what Lord Russel did when the Great Irish Famine hit.
A completely nonsensical analogy.
I hear a lot of “it won’t work”, but nothing about why. Saying over and over again, “It didn’t work.” also proves nothing.
In fact, FDR reduced unemployment from 25% to 15% between 1932 and 1937, then backed off on spending which resulted in an recession, which he then created more spending and turned this around as well.
Funny, the right wing never comes up with facts, they just SAY they have facts — but they never let a fact stop them from spewing garbage. Thus, the Republican Great Depression II.
FDR reduced unemployment from 25% to 15% between 1932 and 1937
Fifteen percent unemployment?
And you call that “working”?
Fifteen percent unemployment?
And you call that “working”?
—–
Seing that he brought it down 10%, I would say yes
How much more would it have come down if he’d had sensible policies?