This country needs a New New Deal

Starfall

Beck - as usual - is wrong.

There's been this entire revisionist attempt by the right wing to remove or minimize people whom they see as too liberal, and FDR is a prime example. In the case of FDR, we now hear this ridiculous theory that the New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression, even though it's been established for years that FDR's programs helped combat the massive unemployment and the financial crisis that led to the Great Depression. Remember unemployment hit almost one in four Americans in 1933, when FDR took over. BY 1936, it was down to 12%. He enacted rules so that the Wall Street banksters couldn't play Russian Roulette with people's deposits anymore. And so on.

There's several reasons why the New Deal didn't pull us out of the Great Depression completely -
1. FDR was trying a whole new approach - Keynesian economics. As such, he was very cautious about how far he should take spending to begin with. Even with his relatively small scale approach, he was derided for being "Socialist" and "Communist"... hmm, where have we heard that recently?
2. The recession of 1937-38. Once the New Deal started to turn unemployment to near 10% (after it had hit almost 25% at the height of the Great Depression) FDR was influenced by so called "fiscal conservatives" to cut back on New Deal spending. As a result, the economy plunged into another recession and delayed full recovery.
3. An obstructionist, right wing Supreme Court. This body ruled many of FDR's reforms unconstitutional for the first few years of the New Deal until 1935, when the body of the court was replaced.
4. World War 2.

It should be noted also that we will never know if the New Deal would have been fully successful because WW2 got in the way. However, it was the massive government spending and subsequent growth in GDP that eventually catapulted us out of the Depression for good - which then lends even more credence to the theory that the New Deal wasn't spending enough, rather than spending too much.

FiveB247x

Not sure if you read my above post - just mentioning so I don't repeat myself.

In terms of what you wrote - you're contradicting yourself. Yes revisionists try and hone in on FDR as an intruding, unconstitutional left leaning law maker who was saved by WW2 in order to bring our nation out of the great depression. As I stated above, part of that statement is correct and part is misleading merely to under-mind certain programs and ideas. You write below that the right is revisionist, yet provide a list of examples why FDR didn't save the economy... that's contradictory. As I state above, it's a bit of an unknown. I also looked online for the exact podcast from NPR discussing it, but was unsuccessful. My point is though, the storybook fairytale in history books is not 100% correct, nor is the way some right-wing revisionists who hate government social programs view the situation. Also, I find it funny that you call the courts "obstructionist", yet leave out the part how FDR stacked the Supreme court to get laws passed. I know there's a lot of details and issues that can be picked apart from this era in terms of economics do's and don'ts, but it should be viewed in a research method, but not to be repeated. Every situation and circumstance is different and it seems like people ignore that key fact compared to political grand-standing with the example in hand as backup.

Starfall wrote:

Beck - as usual - is wrong.

There's been this entire revisionist attempt by the right wing to remove or minimize people whom they see as too liberal, and FDR is a prime example. In the case of FDR, we now hear this ridiculous theory that the New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression, even though it's been established for years that FDR's programs helped combat the massive unemployment and the financial crisis that led to the Great Depression. Remember unemployment hit almost one in four Americans in 1933, when FDR took over. BY 1936, it was down to 12%. He enacted rules so that the Wall Street banksters couldn't play Russian Roulette with people's deposits anymore. And so on.

There's several reasons why the New Deal didn't pull us out of the Great Depression completely -
1. FDR was trying a whole new approach - Keynesian economics. As such, he was very cautious about how far he should take spending to begin with. Even with his relatively small scale approach, he was derided for being "Socialist" and "Communist"... hmm, where have we heard that recently?
2. The recession of 1937-38. Once the New Deal started to turn unemployment to near 10% (after it had hit almost 25% at the height of the Great Depression) FDR was influenced by so called "fiscal conservatives" to cut back on New Deal spending. As a result, the economy plunged into another recession and delayed full recovery.
3. An obstructionist, right wing Supreme Court. This body ruled many of FDR's reforms unconstitutional for the first few years of the New Deal until 1935, when the body of the court was replaced.
4. World War 2.

It should be noted also that we will never know if the New Deal would have been fully successful because WW2 got in the way. However, it was the massive government spending and subsequent growth in GDP that eventually catapulted us out of the Depression for good - which then lends even more credence to the theory that the New Deal wasn't spending enough, rather than spending too much.