The enduring myth of FDR and the New Deal

[Bradg]

MOORE: The enduring myth of FDR and the New Deal - Washington Times

Rather than end the Great Depression, his policies prolonged it

By Stephen Moore - - Friday, September 19, 2014

My seventh-grade son recently wrote a U.S. History paper extolling the virtues of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “It ended the Great Depression,” he wrote with great certainty. He’s only 12 and parroting what the history texts and his teachers told him.

That’s his excuse. What’s Ken Burns’?

Mr. Burns’ docudrama on the Roosevelts — for those who weren’t bored to tears — repeats nearly all the worn-out fairy tales of the FDR presidency, including what I call the most enduring myth of the 20th century, which is that FDR’s avalanche of alphabet-soup government programs ended the Great Depression. Shouldn’t there be a statute of limitations on such lies?

Ask nearly anyone over the age of 80, and they will say that FDR cared about the working man and “gave the country hope,” a point that Mr. Burns emphasizes. Roosevelt exuded empathy, which isn’t a bad thing — remember Bill Clinton’s memorable line “I feel your pain”? — but caring doesn’t create jobs or lift gross domestic product.

Nor does spending government money revive growth, despite the theories put into practice by the then-dean of all economists, John Maynard Keynes. Any objective analysis of these facts can lead to no other conclusion. U.S. unemployment averaged a rate of 18 percent during Roosevelt’s first eight years in office. In the decade of the 1930s, U.S. industrial production and national income fell by about almost one-third. In 1940, after year eight years of the New Deal, unemployment was still averaged a god-awful 14 percent.

Think of it this way. The unemployment rate was more than twice as high eight years into the New Deal than it is today, and American workers now are angry as hornets. Imagine, if jobs were twice as scarce today, the pitchforked revolt that would be going on. This is success?

Almost everything FDR did to jump-start growth retarded it. The rise in the minimum wage kept unemployment intolerably high. (Are you listening, Nancy Pelosi?) Roosevelt’s work programs like the Works Progress Administration, National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration were so bureaucratic as to have minimal impact on jobs. Raising tax rates to nearly 80 percent on the rich stalled the economy. Social Security is and always was from the start a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme that will eventually sink into bankruptcy unless reformed.

The most alarming story of economic ignorance surrounding this New Deal era was the tax increases while the economy was faltering. According to economist Burt Folsom, FDR signed one of the most financially devastating taxes: “On April 27, 1942, he signed an executive order taxing all personal income above $25,000 [rich back then] at 100 percent. Congress balked at that idea and later lowered it to 90 percent at the top level.” The New Dealers completely ignored the lessons of the 1920s tax cuts, which just a decade before had unfurled an age of super-growth.

Then there was the spending and debt barrage. Federal spending catapulted from $4.65 billion in 1933 to nearly $13.7 billion in 1941. This tripling of the federal budget in just eight years came at a time of almost no inflation (just 13.1 percent cumulative during that period). Budget surpluses during the prosperous Coolidge years became ever-larger deficits under FDR’s fiscal reign. During his first term, more than half the federal budget on average came from borrowed money.

The cruel irony of the New Deal is that the liberals’ honorable intentions to help the poor and the unemployed caused more human suffering than any other set of ideas in the past century.

What is maddening is that thanks to this historical fabrication of FDR’s presidency, dutifully repeated by Mr. Burns this past week, we have repeated the mistakes again and again. Had the history books been properly written, it’s quite possible we would never had to endure the catastrophic failure of Obamanomics and the “stimulus plans” that only stimulated debt. The entire rationale for the Obama economic plan in 2009 was to re-create new New Deal.

Doubly amazing is that at this very moment, the left is writing another fabricated history — of the years we have just lived through. The history books are already painting Obama policies as the just-in-time emergency policies that prevented a Second Great Depression. I wonder if 80 years from now, the American people will be as gullible as they are today in believing, as my 12-year-old does, that FDR was an economic savior.

 

[Bigfoot 88]

But FDR drove around waving to the people, smiling and smoking. And he had polio. He must have been an economic genius.

 

[jet57]

But FDR drove around waving to the people, smiling and smoking. And he had polio. He must have been an economic genius.

Yeah; who needed work and food anyway.

 

[Van Basten]

The Roosevelts was a pretty good documentary.

But, if all you want was flashy stuff, then yea, you'd bored to tears. It's PBS, not the History Channel -- not that I don't like the History Channel, given they're good when they want to be.

Also, not too surprising a guy that's part of the Heritage Foundation's upper echelon isn't too big a fan of FDR or the New Deal. And this guy has a messy track record (here's one example) for when he opens his mouth, so yea....take his claims with a grain of salt.

 

[Buck Ewer]

MOORE: The enduring myth of FDR and the New Deal - Washington Times

Republicon fantasy historical revisionism at it's finest.


...next up ...Nixon got a raw deal...

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Poor Stephen Moore, he tries so hard to do an Amity Shlaes impersonation! He cites Folsom (another FDR basher) and complains about marginal tax rates IN THE MIDDLE OF WWII!!!

FFS, I suppose we should have emphasized economic growth instead of winning a 2 front war...in 1942!

The fact is that in spite of the GOP's insistence of cutting govt spending in 1937 and causing a double dip recession, US GDP exceeded pre-depression GDP before war spending had begun. The various New Deal policies caused not only the US to avoid a fascist revolution, it laid the foundation for the 30 Great Years after WWII....when, it should also be noted that the top marginal rate remained above 70%.

Supply siders have these fits where their guilt of lowered tax rates for the top, greater wealth capture by the top 0.1% and declining income for everyone else since 1980 which has in large measure caused the Great Recession, manifests itself in attacking New Deal policies that have been eroded away their minions.

It is all so ironic.

 

[TurtleDude]

noting the most beloved figure in American history to the socialist left was a bit of a clown is going to send his sycophants into a howling foaming frenzy

 

[Buck Ewer]

noting the most beloved figure in American history to the socialist left was a bit of a clown is going to send his sycophants into a howling foaming frenzy

Reagan was a Nazi...
See I can play too...

 

[TurtleDude]

Reagan was a Nazi...
See I can play too...

I didn't vote for Reagan. Try again. I was Ed Clark's campaign manager at Yale/New Haven

 

[Buck Ewer]

I didn't vote for Reagan. Try again. I was Ed Clark's campaign manager at Yale/New Haven

Ed Clark was an anarchist...
Gee this is fun...

 

[ludin]

FDR did a lot of things right (WWII)
then he did a lot of things wrong (economy).

his economic policies were down right aweful.
he stole gold from working people and americans.

he put in wage and price freezes which limited buying power and the ability to expand or decrease prices as needed.
instead of finding new markets for US goods he told people they couldn't produce on their own land even if it was for their own family.

he stacked the court so that he could pass anything he wanted.
he created a ponzi scheme that is now dieing due to lack of funding.

had he encouraged more business growth and economic prosperity through businesses and commerce then he would have ended the depression quicker.

 

[TurtleDude]

Ed Clark was an anarchist...
Gee this is fun...

you can rant and divert all you want but the fact remains FDR's sainthood in the minds of the socialist left is a bit silly and his schemes were more designed to impose statist socialism the they were to cure the Depression

 

[Buck Ewer]

you can rant and divert all you want but the fact remains FDR's sainthood in the minds of the socialist left is a bit silly and his schemes were more designed to impose statist socialism the they were to cure the Depression

Yeah FDR was just a crazy left wing socialist.
If the USA elected him FOUR times to lead their nation, then the USA must be a crazy left wing, statist, socialist country ...right?
BTW ...how many terms did Ed Clark serve as President?

 

[TurtleDude]

Yeah FDR was just a crazy left wing socialist.
If the USA elected him FOUR times to lead their nation, then the USA must be a crazy left wing, statist, socialist country ...right?
BTW ...how many terms did Ed Clark serve as President?

desperate people weren't thinking clearly. Ed served as many as Gore or Kerry. Oh, you probably voted for Bush, right

one of the most moronic arguments is saying because someone got a majority of the votes, that makes their policies correct

 

[TurtleDude]

FDR did a lot of things right (WWII)
then he did a lot of things wrong (economy).

his economic policies were down right aweful.
he stole gold from working people and americans.

he put in wage and price freezes which limited buying power and the ability to expand or decrease prices as needed.
instead of finding new markets for US goods he told people they couldn't produce on their own land even if it was for their own family.

he stacked the court so that he could pass anything he wanted.
he created a ponzi scheme that is now dieing due to lack of funding.

had he encouraged more business growth and economic prosperity through businesses and commerce then he would have ended the depression quicker.

statists and socialists loved his destruction of the tenth amendment, procedural due process etc

 

[Buck Ewer]

desperate people weren't thinking clearly. Ed served as many as Gore or Kerry. Oh, you probably voted for Bush, right

one of the most moronic arguments is saying because someone got a majority of the votes, that makes their policies correct

Well, after twelve years the people must have figured out what the guy was about and they STILL elected him again.
Nah ...nothing he did could have been working...

 

[TurtleDude]

Well, after twelve years the people must have figured out what the guy was about and they STILL elected him again.
Nah ...nothing he did could have been working...

yeah, the sheep were brainwashed into thinking he was helping them

we have seen plenty of other examples of turds winning elections

but as I noted, for socialists and statists he was a god. MOst of leftwing crap in place today is there due to FDR and his pet monkeys on the court

 

[Buck Ewer]

yeah, the sheep were brainwashed into thinking he was helping them

we have seen plenty of other examples of turds winning elections

but as I noted, for socialists and statists he was a god. MOst of leftwing crap in place today is there due to FDR and his pet monkeys on the court

Yeah you must be right ...anarchy would have been much better for 1930s America.

 

[TurtleDude]

Yeah you must be right ...anarchy would have been much better for 1930s America.

that's dishonest claim-saying we needed socialism because the only alternative was anarchy

 

[Buck Ewer]

that's dishonest claim-saying we needed socialism because the only alternative was anarchy

Those simple minded sheep don't deserve democracy do they?
Hoover would have fixed everything in a couple of months.

 

[TurtleDude]

Those simple minded sheep don't deserve democracy do they?
Hoover would have fixed everything in a couple of months.

The Constitution should not have been altered just because FDR could

 

[rabbitcaebannog]

I take Steven Moore with a grain of salt saying he is a big supporter of Reaganomics. One of the big differences between FDR and Reagan's policies are the tax rates. That of course has helped the gap between the rich and poor widen.

 

[ludin]

that's dishonest claim-saying we needed socialism because the only alternative was anarchy

get use to it that is all he can do is false equivalence arguments. IE if you are not for that then you must be for the extreme of the other than.
about as empty of an argument that you can do.

he doesn't understand that there is more than one option from socialism to anarchy

 

[TurtleDude]

get use to it that is all he can do is false equivalence arguments. IE if you are not for that then you must be for the extreme of the other than.
about as empty of an argument that you can do.

he doesn't understand that there is more than one option from socialism to anarchy

its like calling gun owners "gun fetishists"

its really amusing

 

[Gimmesometruth]

I didn't vote for Reagan.

I didn't vote for FDR. Try again.

Derp.