Your thoughts on the New Deal?

What's your opinion on FDR's New Deal? I'm not informed enough to have many opinions on the subject, but I'm against social security and a coupla other aspects of the New Deal. Where do you stand and why? Can you propose an alternative to easing the depression?

He thought that the cure for the great depression was socialism. The depression got worse, but WWII and John Maynard Keynes intervened to save the day. The depression ended but a lot of the socialism stayed around afterwards.

The socialism and govt spending got worse again starting with LBJ and continuing up to the reagan years. I think that social security reform as bush has proposed would be a huge step in the right direction.

The Clinton years were actually pretty good in terms of govt spending, since the republicans and democrats spent more time fighting than they did spending our money.

Milton Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

rofl

Ok I was tired. Yeah the other Keynes. I suck at history.

The wrong thing for the right reasons.

We seem to have a habit of that in this country. :fire:

Americans who were starving to death got to eat again. He saved countless lives. Men who were unemployed got to work and support their families again.
FDR's policies were NOT conceived in a theoritical vacuum by overweight couch potatoes. They were a rational, effective response to a real state of emergency.
Like Alabama's Song of the South says:

Cotton on the roadside Cotton in the Ditch
We all picked the cotton but we never got Rich
Daddy was a veteran, a Southern Democrat
You outta get a rich man to vote like that

Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeks were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt was gonna save us all...

Daddy got sick and Mama got down
the County got the farm and we moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA
he bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet

FDR saved people's lives. The only people who ask whether or not it was a good idea are the people too young to remember it.
Americans don't starve too death in the streets anymore b/c FDR and later LBJ declared war on poverty. Unfortunately, full stomachs lead to short memories.
-David

Short term marginal success, long term failure.

New deal programs provided some immediate relief to people who lost everything. Social Security provided relief to those approaching retirement age who lost a lifetime of savings and pension commitments from companies that vanished. We benefit today using national and state parks that were improved by new deal programs, and the REA is still bringing electric power to remote communities. The depression moved a reluctant government to make some needed improvments to our infrastructure. The New Deal provided the push to electrify the country and connect the roadways in a nationwide system.

Long term, WWII drug the economy out of depression. The military needs restarted factories that had been shut down. People went back to work at real jobs.

The problem with the New Deal Programs is that they outlived their usefulness. There is absolutly no need for the Rural Electrification Act, yet it still exists. Many argue that Social Security served its purpose and should be ended. The biggest problem is the consequence that people now expect government to solve all their problems by throwing money at them. It eroded the idea of individual risk and responsibility.

FDR's bank inspections were pretty ingenious and were nothing more than people walking into the bank and declaring the bank "good to go." The real downfall of America in the depression was the Smoot-Hawley tarriff which started a huge trade war between american countries and european contries, and extended the depression much longer than it should have gone. Had the tarriff not been agreed to in congress and passed, the crash would have been similar to previous crashes, short lived. Probably nothing more than a recession. The market if I recall actually crashed nine times prior to the 1929 crash.

As for the new deal, it is the downfall of American government as the founders intended. It has increased the size of the Federal government and pushed the states more and more out of the mix. The new deal and the seventeenth amendment have truely inflated the size of the federal government.

As for FDR, he was a socialist. He believed that government was the answer to all problems, and that America was great because of government. He was also consumed with power. He continued to run for president after his two terms were up, and when he didn't get his way, like a true liberal, he tried to overrun the supreme court by adding additional justices of his choosing to the court. So when all else failed he could legislate from the bench.

Oh yeah post #100!

I oppose most socialistic/welfare-type things on general principles. But a realistic assessment of the New Deal requires that you actually understand what the hell was going on at the time, the political climate, and the consequences of global depression elsewhere.

With 25%+ unemployment in the U.S. (and often even worse results in other countries), the Great Depression was an economic cataclysm. Its radicalizing effects on politics around the world simply cannot be overlooked; the Nazi rise to power in Germany was simply not possible without the Great Depression, its popularitiy being proportional to the unemployment figures. And it is commonly argued that Conservative handling of the Great Depression in the UK is what lead to the emergence of the socialist Labor Party as the preeminent party in 1945. In France, a Communist Party literally taking directions from Moscow became a make-or-break coalition partner in goverment at various times (most notably the Popular Front in 1936).

Consider, too, that Hoover's (apparent) inaction was politically suicidal, and anyone coming into office after him was going to take the hint and persue a much more activist/radical line, just so they could keep their job.

Once you rule out the developed countries that fiddled with either Fascism, Communism or Socialism, you've pretty much got nothing left but FDR's New Deal in the U.S., and the U.K., which went straight to Socialism in the postwar aftermath. When you further consider how much of the New Deal was negated by the Supreme Court anyway, and the fact that alot of Social Security's practical problems (if not its basic theoretical flakiness) was the result of subsequent Congressional stupidity, the long-term effects of the New Deal start to look like not such a Big Deal.

People talk about the "slippery slope," but that is a logical fallacy. The "welfare state," such as it was in 1936, did not change in its essentials for another THIRTY YEARS. The political monstrosity that was LBJ, and his colossal increase in welfare programs during a time of economic prosperity can hardly be blamed on FDR's barrage of emergency measures, during a time of severe global economic crisis, in a global political context where developed countries are going batsh*t insane.

So, I dunno. I think alot of the individual New Deal programs were stupid. But I think the long-term negative impact has been overstated, and I also think that FDR basically had to come up with something like the New Deal to prevail politically. Had Hoover somehow squeaked by and beat FDR (for instance, by it becoming public that FDR was a cripple), he probably would have had to take similar measures himself (as he, in fact, already started to do, just too late to save his political hide).

The biggest problem is the consequence that people now expect government to solve all their problems by throwing money at them. It eroded the idea of individual risk and responsibility.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Did you guys know that the first act FDR made in office was to seize all the privately owned gold? Yeah... he took everybody's private property and compensated them $20 an ounce or so. It's quite a fascinating story to read.

I have a low opinion of socialism in general.

By the way, those of you who aren't fans of LBJ...
He had a balanced budget while fighting a war and increasing aid to poor children (Headstart pre-Kindergarden programs, for example).
Can anyone name a Republican president who has had a balanced budget since then?
(I'll give you a hint...there are none!).
-David

By the way, those of you who aren't fans of LBJ...
He had a balanced budget while fighting a war and increasing aid to poor children (Headstart pre-Kindergarden programs, for example).
Can anyone name a Republican president who has had a balanced budget since then?
(I'll give you a hint...there are none!).

Yes, he did SUCH a good job of prosecuting that war, too. :rolleyes:

And future administrations actually PAYING for his programs (which went into full effect after his slithering out of office in disgrace, of course), naturally created budget problems for his successors.

Re: Talon's comment on FDR & gold... yesterdays LV Review Journal editorial from Vin Suprynowicz
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-24-Sun-2005/opinion/1248944.html

The New Deal was a shot in the arm for Big Government, really Big Government to which, it can be argued, said shot in the arm was what was needed to keep the US alive at that time... and is probably one of the major reasons people today like to think that the solution to every problem is... MORE government.

It worked once, maybe it'll work again.

I look forward to the day when every other person (We'll call him/her "ODD") in the US is on a government payroll depending upon "EVEN" to keep "ODD" afloat. NOT! :scrutiny:

Now, if we could just convince Congress to lighten up and not spend more than "THEY MAKE"... hahahahaha Fat Chance That

FDR Accomplished almost nothing. His "make-work" schemes put some people back to work and created some assets we still use today but everything else was basically of zero effect in the short term and of the negative variety long-term. Had FDR not been able to avail himself of the convenient tool of WWII he would be written off now as one of the most useless presidents of the 20th century, endlessly flailing about and accomplishing nothing.

Considering his theft of privately owned gold and the cynical manuevering of the US into WWII and the socialist garbage which has so damaged our nation since, my personal opinion is he should be dug up, tried for treason and shot at sunrise. I can introduce you to several old-timers who lived through his regime who whole heartedly back up that thought.

Thanks Baba.. yeah, that's what I was talkin' about.

He had a balanced budget Well, that's because he wasn't dealing with his own budget legacy. If he'd been dealing with his own legacy, he'd have busted the budget fighting the Vietnam War.

Since LBJ, we've had an untouchable portion of the budget -- the sugar-daddy stuff. Then we've have defense, which is touchable. Thus the feds have had two workable choices -- a balanced budget or a strong defense. Reagan & Bush I & II opted for strong defense. Clinton opted for a (sorta) balanced budget.

Hey, there are arguments to be made for both choices. But spare us the silliness that LBJ did better than those who had to deal with the budget hell he created.

Oh, but you must be correct about FDR -- it says so in a country music song.

The New Deal wasn't just Social Security and welfare, it also involved the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, both of which did a great deal to stabilize the banking system and securities markets, and both of which are still in effect today. Despite the Libertarians' purported magical ability of a market to regulate itself, I can't imagine a stock market not regulated by the SEC. Insider trading and other dishonest trading practices would be near impossible for the average investor to investigate on their own.

Also, despite your feeling on modern labor unions and freedom or lack thereof in labor markets, the New Deal also created the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, both of which had a hugely stabilizing effect on labor markets. I majored in Industrial and Labor Relations when I was in college, and I can tell you that the typical American workplace was very different in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, than how it is now, thanks to programs like the NLRB, minimum wage, overtime, etc.

I think the Constitutional authority for the New Deal is highly suspect. Here (http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=135122) is why.

my personal opinion is he should be dug up, tried for treason and shot at sunrise.
Seconded.

Here's a web page devoted to FDR's New Deal for those youngster's or lurkers in the group whose schooling may (or may not) be somewhat "wanting"...
http://newdeal.feri.org/

By the way, those of you who aren't fans of LBJ...
He had a balanced budget while fighting a war and increasing aid to poor childrenHis Great Society programs cost us (depending on the source) somewhere between 4 and 8 trillion dollars in Federal welfare spending since he took office . . . remarkably close to today's national debt. Add that to a war where he was seemingly on Ho Chi Minh's payroll and where >55,000 American lives were lost, couple that with support of his slumlord wife's "Beautify America" program and more personal stuff like getting broadcast regs passed that gave KLBJ TV exclusive broadcast rights in the VHF part of the spectrum . . . no I didn't like him then, and I sure don't now.

I think the New Deal was more of a mixed bag. Some things worked and some didn't.

The SEC was a needed addition IMO for the watchdog effect-you can't go around selling stock on margin anymore. Lots of people were hurt badly because when the stocks tanked, the margins were called in and people had no money to pay.

My parents used to talk about some of the programs such as WPA-officially Works Progress Administration. They called it "We Piddle Around". Communism got a toe-hold in America because of the crash. Some things done with Roosevelt's try-anything attitude are something to behold. See Hoover dam and things like that which led to population growth in areas where there wasn't enough water to support areas such as LA.

Social Security is not much more than another savings account for Congress to raid when they see fit and to fight over. So, you have a retirement account which brings in a blazing 1% interest-I'm not impressed at all!

I can make more money by investing in US savings bonds, and its a guarranteed return not to mention that the great Uncle does not keep whats left should I die before I can collect-my kids would get it as they should....

Most folks would have done better to simply put their money in a savings account at their bank. FDIC and other programs are nice promises, but if the economy trashed out tomorrow, Uncle Sugar would not have the money to give.

Sure, LBJ prosecuted a war in Viet Nam and the war on poverty, and failed at both. That he failed in Viet Nam was directly due to his meddling in it and trying to fight a war on the cheap. That he gets the credit for the civil rights movement in the 60's just makes me shake my head. His biggest stumbling block was his own democratic party, yet he gets the light for signing legislation delivered by the republicans.

In our never ending search for greed and profit, there has been some amazing things happen. The 1990's saw a lot of people get filthy rich off the dot coms and whatnot, and there was nothing there of value but paper!

If there was actual value there, the stock market would not be in the shape its in. Because the government decided that it could tax dividends at both ends-you get taxed for making it and the company gets taxed by paying it, so here comes the stock options, which artifically inflated its value.

The fact that the government is the largest employer of Americans is so wrong in a democratic republic.

The New Deal outlived its very limited usefulness when WWII came along, and should have been scrapped.

The coveted "Control Group's Hitting the Nail On the Head Award" for the day goes to Delmar:
The fact that the government is the largest employer of Americans is so wrong in a democratic republic
No single fact or statistic sums up what's wrong with the way this country's run as well as that one - government spending makes up more than 30% of the nation's GDP!

We can debate the efficacy of the New Deal in addressing the Great Depression for as long as anyone wants, but there's no getting around the fact that the New Deal legitimized government as an active player in the economy - not that it hadn't been previously, but it was the beginning of the government spending money simply to spend money. That sea change is what allowed LBJ's policies to be implemented. Prior to the New Deal, it would have been impossible for Johnson to get even a quarter of what he did through. In a moment (on a historical time scale) of shock, FDR single-handedly reoriented America.

It sort of tempts one to draw parallels between Black Thursday and 9-11, doesn't it...

FDR saved people's lives. The only people who ask whether or not it was a good idea are the people too young to remember it.

In which case, no one alive today's entitled to have an opinion about the American Revolution, right?

...was the WPA---Work Projects Administration. My Dad told me that one time there were a bunch of guys hired and working on a WPA project north of Syracuse. Somebody died on the job. A doctor came in and examined 57 people before he found the dead one.

"Only the government can afford incompetent workers." Captain Stubby--remember him?

It's far too easy to let the gov't solve your problems [while absorbing your rights]. That's the black lining to the silver cloud of the new deal. Once addicted to the gov't tit, you're doomed.

rr

I have a fairly low opinion of FDR.

The problem though, is that many of "The Greatest Generation" absolutely love him because they were scared out of their minds with years of Depression and then WWII. If you lived back then, you did not know the outcome. People were scared silly and thus FDR became larger than life.

FDR played right into this, with his "Four Freedoms", all of which were socialist entitlements or utopian fantasy. I especially laugh at "Freedom of Fear", as fear is a basic human emotion!

Anyhow, as the older generations die off I think FDR will not be remembered so fondly.

I may be way too young to remember it, but I seem to be just the right age to keep paying for it....

DanO

"I may be way too young to remember it, but I seem to be just the right age to keep paying for it...."

Well said.

I go into my favorite grocery store on old phartz discount day and get a discount because I'm one of the old phartz that either helped monkey the world up or failed to straighten it out. I get my beer cheaper and the youngsters who are working two jobs and fighting to keep food on the table and clothes on the backs of their kids who are being brainwashed by government indoctrination centers in the "No Teacher Left Behind" "education" world pay right through the nose to eat and to keep me going.

Ah, thank you FDR.

You will pay a long time for FDR. The man who made free-loading a respectable occupation. In fact you may not pay only your cash, but your career and a future lived in liberty. I'm pretty sure that the seeds of the destruction were nurtured and germinated during that "Greatest Generation" period of time.

rr

Some elements were reasonable reforms that were long overdue. A lot of it was simply acts of desparation in the face of a global economic catastrophe that had never been seen before or since.

I'm not a fan of FDR, and I hate to defend him, but given the zietgiest of the times, the bread and circuses "socialism lite" approach defused what _might_ have ultimately become a communist revolution in America, as many of the preliminaries were present, including communist agitation to fan resentment fed on widespread poverty and disaffectation.

Masses of poor, hungry, desparate armed people with no apparent hope for the future tend to latch onto whichever savior present themselves, and the possibility that it could have turned out a lot worse is rarely contemplated.

That being said, we're shackled to his legacy, and still paying the bill.

Quote:
FDR saved people's lives. The only people who ask whether or not it was a good idea are the people too young to remember it.



In which case, no one alive today's entitled to have an opinion about the American Revolution, right?

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion. What its worth vs. the opinion of eye-witnesses who actually lived through the event?

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion. What its worth vs. the opinion of eye-witnesses who actually lived through the event?
Good question. Which do you suppose is more objective analysis: our opinions of the French Revolution, or the people who were rioting in the streets'? Our opinions of the Wars Of the Roses, or those of the Yorks and Lancasters?

Only people who lived through it can legitimately understand the motivations and the emotions of the time. Only people who didn't live through it can look at the situation as a whole with any objectivity.

That being said, I don't think we're far enough away from that era for us to approach real objectivity. But the claim that people who lived through something have more valid opinions on its social value is false. They have more valid opinions on how it felt and the prevailing atmosphere, but not on its historical impact.

But the claim that people who lived through something have more valid opinions on its social value is false. They have more valid opinions on how it felt and the prevailing atmosphere, but not on its historical impact.

Maybe. On the other hand, when I want the facts, I go to the eye-witnesses.
David

Okay, then find an eye witness to FDR's court packing plan, that resulted in the bastardization of the Commerce Clause, and the bloated and expansive federal gov't we have today.

Not all of the programs were bad, although every bit of it was socialist. Social Security falls in the "bad" category, as it actually caused a second decline in the economy when the withholdings started up, taking money out people's pockets and lengthening/worsening the Depression.
Combine that with the current abuses of that system, and you've got sufficient grounds for credibly arguing that FDR was one of the worst things to happen to this nation.

As for LBJ, please. There's no credible way anyone can argue he was successful at anything except playing politics or, according to those who knew him best, eliminating rivals at any cost.

See above.

FDR saved people's lives. The only people who ask whether or not it was a good idea are the people too young to remember it

I can recall a conversation I had with some of my parent's friends about the last Presidental election. I was urging them to vote for Bush. One of them said, "When the Republicans were in charge when I was growing up we stood in bread lines, and if it weren't for Mr. Roosevelt we'd have starved". And indeed they did back in the 1930's. There's no arguing with them on that.

They certainly supported welfare reform though. :D

The only people who ask whether or not it was a good idea are the people too young to remember it. My four grandparents, six aunts and uncles and two parents all lived through the New Deal. Most are dead now, but their assessments were that the New Deal was bad in the long term. That's 12 eyewitnesses who disliked the results. Anecdotal? Yep. But there are also plenty of contemporary and near contemporary criticisms that trash the New Deal for various reason, many re-stated here.

Spare us the utterly false claim that there was this universal love of the New Deal by those who lived through it. Some did. Some didn't. Same as any government program.

But nice two-fer in the appeal to age and appeal to popularity fallacies.

One of the creations of his administration that makes me continually angry is Social Security. As Gordon Liddy described it, the program is nothing more than "an intergenerational Ponzi scheme." It could have and should have been set up as a traditional pension plan, but I believe that this was deliberately not done in the knowledge that problems wouldn't arise for decades, and the key players would all be gone by that point in time. I will include some very good commentary from a reader of the WS Journal, who responded to an editorial on the motivation of the AARP in opposing Social Security reform with the following:

*******************************
"The Trust Fund is a debt, not an asset" (" AARP's Double Game ," Review & Outlook, April 18).

Amen, you said it. It is the biggest component of the nonpublic debt. You might also mention that the Social Security "trust fund" is not a trust fund, but a reserve account in the U.S. Treasury. And the "trustees" are not really trustees because there is no trust fund. And the actuaries are not really actuaries because there is no insurance policy to analyze. And all those references to insurance in the Social Securities Act really mean "tax-and-transfer," not insurance. And the guaranteed Social Security benefits are not really guaranteed because there is no contract language in the Social Security Act. And the payroll taxes are not insurance premiums, but merely flat taxes. And . . . well, you get the picture.

Samuel Burkeen
Reston, Va.
****************************************

In reading a recent book on WWII, I came across the quote from Gen. MacArthur as he learned of FDR's death: "A man who never told the truth, when a lie would suffice." Yes indeed, a slick politician who nevertheless did accomplish some good, but that doesn't disguise some of the lasting damage that he did beyond the good things accomplished.

FWIW,

emc

Maybe. On the other hand, when I want the facts, I go to the eye-witnesses.
Eyewitnesses are notoriously bad sources for facts. Ask any cop who's been called to the scene of an accident and taken eyewitness reports about the accident that happened ten minutes ago. Eyewitnesses are great resources for general atmosphere, not for facts. As it stands, we've got plenty of documentation of the economic climate, the text of the laws, and the subsequent change in the economic climate from then until now. The facts aren't in dispute. Whether or not the laws and programs effected the subsequent changes is in dispute, whether or not the laws and programs caused many of the long-term costs we currently see, and whether the benefits outweighed the costs if the laws were, in fact, the cause of both.

None of this is anything that an eyewitness can confirm or deny. An eyewitness can explain that before the TVA, he didn't have a job and was facing starvation, after the TVA he did have a job and could put food on the table. That's no doubt true, but it's also information we already had. Asking him whether it was worth it is sort of like asking an eight year old girl whether buying her a pony is worth the money - asking for opinion from an obviously biased source. Ask any modern-day welfare recipient if the program is worth it, and I bet he says yes.

This does not mean that in seventy-five years, that man's opinion will be the most important one to consider when looking at the historical question "was the welfare state worth it?"

(Note the past tense in that question...guess my optimism is showing)

Control Group

You are correct about eyewitnesses, but you seem to be accepting cookekdjr's false premise that the New Deal was subject to universal acclaim by its contemporaries. It wasn't. Thus cookekdjr's argument is doubly flawed:

False: Eyewitnesses automatically give better historical assessments.
False: Eyewitnesses gave universal acclaim.

All of which is nothing but cookekdjr's attempt at a red herring focus on the arguer rather than the arguement. Cookekdjr clearly has run out of logical and factual points, so he has resorted to a "soft ad hominem." He attacks those who disagree with him as too young to have valid opinions.

Eyewitnesses are notoriously bad sources for facts. Ask any cop who's been called to the scene of an accident and taken eyewitness reports about the accident that happened ten minutes ago. Eyewitnesses are great resources for general atmosphere, not for facts.
Gosh, I 've never heard that one before. I wouldn't know the first thing about that. :rolleyes: I have NEVER in my life had to interview eye-witnesses. EVER. :rolleyes:

Gosh, I 've never heard that one before. I wouldn't know the first thing about that. I have NEVER in my life had to interview eye-witnesses. EVER
Am I supposed to assume from that statement that you're a LEO who deals with eyewitnesses on a regular basis? If so, I certainly had no idea you were. My apologies for implying an ignorance which, apparently, doesn't exist.

Of course, my assumption of ignorance was predicated on the belief that no one who actually does interview eyewitnesses on a regular basis could possibly claim that they're the best source of fact. Which, I note, you haven't really addressed.

ControlGroup,
1st let me say I'm sorry I was so sarcastic. That was just uncalled for.
2nd, I'm a homicide prosecutor. I've tried over 100 jury trials...lots of other stuff, too. I deal with eye-witnesses on a regular basis. Its what I do.
I'm familiar with the research on eye-witness testimony. I know that if you ever have two or more witnesses you will always have some conflicts in testimony.
But the bottom line is that the eye-witnesses will be your best source for the facts 99 times out of 100. They don't just give you what they saw- they give what they heard, smelled, tasted, touched, thought and felt (emotionally). Sure, some of it is subjective, but we can generally take that into account when figuring out the objective facts.
I come from a large family in the rural South. I talked to them growing up, and I listened to what they had to say about their life in the 1930's. Everyone I talked to considered FDR a saint. He gave many people hope, but he also gave them a job, and therefore food, for them, and their children. Less people died, less people starved to death, because of what he did. And some of those people are my family.
Later, in school, I read about the objective facts about what he did. And when I read in a textbook about starving families, and saw pictures of thousands of men in business suits waiting in line for bread, I already knew what it was like for poor widows like my great grandmother, who wondered how she could feed her children for the next meal.
Its real easy to critisize FDR if you have never been hungry, and all you have to do is monday morning quarterback some liberal democrat. But I know people who fed their children because of what FDR did.
By the way, the conservatives of FDR's day thought he was wrong, too. They must not have known anyone who was hungry.
I think if we had to explain to the people of the day that it was wrong for the government to save their lives, we might have a different opinion.
Can you imagine bending down to a dirty faced hungry four-year-old and telling her that you know she's hungry, but its just not right to give her daddy a government job so that he can feed her?
Just my two cents.

New Deal = socialism
socialism = communism on a slower pace and with a little (or a lot) less violence

hence
New Deal = communism.

Now lets examine the degree to which the Roosevelt cabinet and other arms of government were penetrated by known paid Soviet communist agents.

Per the Venona intercepts, interviews with retired Soviet officers, and other recently declassified sources, AT LEAST 300 Communist agents in the government, including, (but not limited to...)


Elizabeth Bentley Lover and agent of the Soviet espionage head in the U.S.

Harry Dexter White Assistant Secretay of Treasury (gee, do you THINK that MIGHT have any influence on the New Deal and on WWII?) Gave the Soviet the American currency plates (for the occupied sector of Germany) costing us about $3 billion!

Morton Sobell Atomic bomb espionage
Victor Perlo War Production board
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster Elizabeth Bentley Treasury Economist
David Greenglass Atomic bomb secrets transmitted to the Soviet
J. Peters KEY SOVIET SPY IN THE U.S.A.
Jacob Golos Soviet head of Espionage in the U.S.

Harry Gold Transmitted atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet and to the Rosenbergs.

Alger Hiss State Department high official engaged in espionage and positions detrimental to the U.S.A. drew up the UN charter (gee, I WONDER why we alwys get screwed at the UN...)

Lauchlin Currie, administrative assistant to FDR;
Duncan Lee, chief of staff to the head of OSS;
Harry Hopkins, special advisor to FDR;
Henry Wallace, FDR’s vice-president 1940-44;(also held many cabinet posts) Owen Lattimore, high-profile liberal journalist;
Joseph Davies, ambassador to the USSR;
Harold Ickes, FDR’s interior secretary.
Franklin Victor Reno, a statistician working at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a principal testing site for the U.S. Army; thanks to Reno, he conveyed to the Soviets a diagram of the Norden bombsight,

Considering the government was shot through with Communist traitors, is it any wonder the New Deal was Socialist/Communist? AND isn't working?

Its real easy to critisize FDR if you have never been hungry, and all you have to do is monday morning quarterback some liberal democrat. But I know people who fed their children because of what FDR did.

And I know people today who may be eating Alpo because they relied on the myth of Social Security providing for them, rather than them providing for themselves. That's FDR's true legacy.

I come from a large family in the rural South. I talked to them growing up, and I listened to what they had to say about their life in the 1930's. Everyone I talked to considered FDR a saint. He gave many people hope, but he also gave them a job, and therefore food, for them, and their children. Less people died, less people starved to death, because of what he did. And some of those people are my family.

A lot of people say the same thing about Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler. Not comparing them, but the fact that people argue in favor of someone does not justify intentionally ignoring the facts. By our own admission, counselor, you are prejudiced in favor of FDR, and your statements in support thereof are suspect.

I'm not sure I understand, Rich. Are you saying that since FDR had spies in his adminstration, the New Deal programs were a bad idea? Or in other words, we should have just let everybody starve to death instead of implementing these programs, merely because spies were working in the government?

A lot of people say the same thing about Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler.
Well, take away their evil deeds, and they weren't bad men. :)

cookedjr, no apology necessary - I very much understand the "heat of the moment" in a debate.

In any event, I don't mean to disparage or minimize what any families went through during the Great Depression. I certainly don't mean to impugn their recollections or opinions. That doesn't mean, however, that I give them a free pass on being right.

I have no doubt that you've heard any number of people who lived through the time explain that FDR was a saint and saved their lives. This doesn't mean he did, it means they believe he did, which is a horse of an entirely different color. You can find plenty of people today who claim that Clinton was responsible for the boom of the late 90s, and GWB responsible for the collapse. They honestly believe this, and they've got personal experience from the time. But that doesn't prove causality.

It's entirely possible that certain of FDR's programs did, in fact, directly salvage some people's lives, and to those people, FDR is no doubt a saint. But that very fact makes them the worst possible judges of the overall worth of the programs in a long-term context. I'd be very much in favor if the government bought me out of debt, but that doesn't make it good policy.

The mantra "if it saves just one child" is morally bankrupt - balancing the lives of some against the well-being of many is a sticky, unpleasant, and dirty sort of business, but it has to be done. The fact that FDR's programs made all the difference to some people in some parts of the country does not necessarily mean that they were worth the long-term costs that they incurred. How much of a burden on future generations can be incurred to give jobs to what percentage of people right now?

That's my real problem with the eyewitness testimony. Any benefactor of the programs will almost certainly claim that they were absolutely the right thing to do, just like anyone harmed by them will claim that they were absolutely wrong. As it currently stands, the benefactors are passing away, and the long-term victims make up the rest of the population, so it's not surprising that there's a significant number of people who decry FDR as the worst president this country's ever had.

Frankly, given that FDR's programs have incurred ongoing systemic costs imposed upon the American economy and politics, for them to have been justified, they would have had to generate systemic solutions to the Great Depression. It's my belief that they didn't (I recognize this is debatable, of course). The ongoing evolution of this country into a less-free nation, the increasing tax burden on the population, the growing welfare state with its attendant crime and institutionalized poverty, are all costs that I trace back to FDR's policies, and they're costs we've been dealing with ever since that time. Moreover, they're costs that I see no end to in the forseeable future. So how many years - decades - of this decline are a good price to pay for saving thousands of people for one decade? We're at seventy years and counting. At some point, it becomes a bad trade, no matter how moving or how tragic individual stories of the time may be.

Of course, this is all predicated on the belief that FDR's policies were, in fact, the cause of the various dismaying trends I've named. This may or may not be true - the fact that I believe it doesn't make it fact, certainly. But it's something that eyewitness testimony is irrelevant to determining.

FDR was the father of the modern Democratic party.

That is nothing to be proud of. He was a philandering elitist who believed government was the answer to people's problems.

As has been said, we are now living FDRs true legacy in the form of debt, social security and the ever-increasing socialism he brought into vogue.

Yes, he was popular among those anxious to receive a handout. Is that really admirable?

.......and he confiscated privately held gold? :what:

How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People

by Jim Powell

Jim Powell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is author of FDR's Folly, How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (Crown Forum, 2003).

Democratic presidential candidates as well as some conservative intellectuals, are suggesting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is a good model for government policy today.

Mounting evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists -- including two Nobel Prize winners -- at Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the University of California (Berkeley) and University of Chicago, among other universities.

New Deal programs were financed by tripling federal taxes from $1.6 billion in 1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, holding company taxes and so-called "excess profits" taxes all went up.

The most important source of New Deal revenue were excise taxes levied on alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, matches, candy, chewing gum, margarine, fruit juice, soft drinks, cars, tires (including tires on wheelchairs), telephone calls, movie tickets, playing cards, electricity, radios -- these and many other everyday things were subject to New Deal excise taxes, which meant that the New Deal was substantially financed by the middle class and poor people. Yes, to hear FDR's "Fireside Chats," one had to pay FDR excise taxes for a radio and electricity! A Treasury Department report acknowledged that excise taxes "often fell disproportionately on the less affluent."

Until 1937, New Deal revenue from excise taxes exceeded the combined revenue from both personal income taxes and corporate income taxes. It wasn't until 1942, in the midst of World War II, that income taxes exceeded excise taxes for the first time under FDR. Consumers had less money to spend, and employers had less money for growth and jobs.

New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring.

Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people - blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) cut back farm production and devastated black tenant farmers who needed work. The National Labor Relations Act (1935) gave unions monopoly bargaining power in workplaces and led to violent strikes and compulsory unionization of mass production industries. Unions secured above-market wages, triggering big layoffs and helping to usher in the depression of 1938.

What about the good supposedly done by New Deal spending programs? These didn't increase the number of jobs in the economy, because the money spent on New Deal projects came from taxpayers who consequently had less money to spend on food, coats, cars, books and other things that would have stimulated the economy. This is a classic case of the seen versus the unseen -- we can see the jobs created by New Deal spending, but we cannot see jobs destroyed by New Deal taxing.

For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political "swing" states in the West and East - where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn't see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side.

Americans needed bargains, but FDR hammered consumers -- and millions had little money. His National Industrial Recovery Act forced consumers to pay above-market prices for goods and services, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act forced Americans to pay more for food. Moreover, FDR banned discounting by signing the Anti-Chain Store Act (1936) and the Retail Price Maintenance Act (1937).

Poor people suffered from other high-minded New Deal policies like the Tennessee Valley Authority monopoly. Its dams flooded an estimated 750,000 acres, an area about the size of Rhode Island, and TVA agents dispossessed thousands of people. Poor black sharecroppers, who didn't own property, got no compensation.

FDR might not have intended to harm millions of poor people, but that's what happened. We should evaluate government policies according to their actual consequences, not their good


http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-29-03.html

Poor people suffered from other high-minded New Deal policies like the Tennessee Valley Authority monopoly. Its dams flooded an estimated 750,000 acres, an area about the size of Rhode Island, and TVA agents dispossessed thousands of people. Poor black sharecroppers, who didn't own property, got no compensation.

TVA is a perfect example of the double edged sword. It can't be denied that TVA provided some very great benefits to the region, but the dispossession of individuals (much like the dispossession of those in Oak Ridge) had very nasty consequences. I've had to deal with both on a professional and personal basis.

Well, take away their evil deeds, and they weren't bad men. Take away the water and the ocean isn't wet.Can you imagine bending down to a dirty faced hungry four-year-old and telling her that you know she's hungry, but its just not right to give her daddy a government job so that he can feed her? 1) Logical fallacy: appeal to emotion.

2) Logical fallacy: changing the subject -- the question is whether the New Deal was good or bad for the nation, not whether someone would have the heart to deny a hungry child's father a job. You attempt to change the subject from an assessment of results to an assessment of motive.

3) Logical fallacy: subtle ad hominem -- you imply that people who think the New Deal was bad are heartless and would deny food to a starving child.

I highly suggest everyone read this book (available free in totality):

America's Great Depression (http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf)

When you look at the facts, FDR didn't save anybody, he swindled everybody.

"I'm not sure I understand, Rich. Are you saying that since FDR had spies in his adminstration, the New Deal programs were a bad idea?"

Not just IN his administration: in very high office RUNNING the administration, with his knowledge and approval - FDR was warned numerous times by the FBI and various military intelligence agencies - warnings he chose to ignore. And for the record, Social Security, the alphabet soup of illegal "aid agencies", the UN, violating neutrality laws, shipping prohibited items to Russia in lend-lease - VERY BAD IDEAS, all implimented by FDR's Communist stooges, with his approval, either explicit, or implicit.


"Or in other words, we should have just let everybody starve to death instead of implementing these programs, merely because spies were working in the government?"

1. Those aren't the ONLY two choices.

2. IF you were in a swing state, or part of a "political machine" that coould dole out patronage, you got the pork, (or any other food), baby. (Little trick FDR picked up from his Communist buddies - see "Ukraine, Famine") If you were in a "yellow dog" state, or one that was a lost cause for the Dems, you starved anyway, because you not only didn't get a proportionate slice of the aid money, but government policy and taxation stunted private sector growth....until WWII bailed him out.

FDR saved people's lives. The only people who ask whether or not it was a good idea are the people too young to remember it.
Americans don't starve too death in the streets anymore b/c FDR and later LBJ declared war on poverty. Unfortunately, full stomachs lead to short memories.
-David

Really?

Well my Pop was born in 1924 in West Virginia, raised back up in a hollow and despised FDR and LBJ.

He called them both "Commie B**"***s, and since I was not there, I will rely on my late, poor Father, his family's eye-witness accounts, my research, and agree with them.

Denny

The New Deal Debunked (again)
By Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[Posted September 27, 2004]

Macroeconomic model builders have finally realized what Henry Hazlitt and John T. Flynn (among others) knew in the 1930s: FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt "got us out of the Depression" and "saved capitalism from itself," as generations of Americans have been taught by the state's educational establishment.

This realization on the part of macroeconomists comes in the form of an article in the August 2004 Journal of Political Economy entitled "New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis," by UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian. This is a big deal, since the JPE is arguably the top academic economics journal in the world.

"Real gross domestic product per adult, which was 39 percent below trend at the trough of the Depression in 1933, remained 27 percent below trend in 1939," the authors write. And "Similarly, private hours worked were 27 percent below trend in 1933 and remained 21 percent below trend in 1939."

This should be no surprise to anyone who has studied the reality of the Great Depression, for U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that the official unemployment rate was still 17.2 percent in 1939 despite seven years of "economic salvation" at the hands of the Roosevelt administration (the normal, pre-Depression unemployment rate was about 3 percent). Per capita GDP was lower in 1939 than in 1929 ($847 vs. $857), as were personal consumption expenditures ($67.6 billion vs. $78.9 billion), according to Census Bureau data. Net private investment was minus $3.1 billion from 1930–40.

Cole and Ohanian write as though they were surprised—even shocked—to discover these facts, not so much because they were bamboozled by The Myth of the New Deal, but because of their devotion to "neoclassical model building" as opposed to the study of economic reality. They label as "striking" the fact that the recovery from the Great Depression was "very weak" (a dramatic understatement). And why is it so striking? Because "[t]hese data contrast sharply with neoclassical theory . . ."

The neoclassical theory of depressions might well be thought of as a Frankenstein Monster theory. As explained by Cole and Ohanian, "The weak recovery is puzzling because the large negative shocks that some economists believe caused the 1929–33 downturn—including monetary shocks, productivity shocks, and banking shocks—become positive after 1933." Thus, according to neoclassical theory, the economy during a depression is somewhat like a prostrate Frankenstein monster, with economists playing the role of mad scientists who "shock" the beast into becoming a living being once again. They do this with various "injections" of government spending or easy credit that will supposedly cause a "roaring" recovery (just as the rejuvenated beast roared as he left the laboratory to terrorize the townsfolk in the movie, "Young Frankenstein").

"The monetary base increases more than 100 percent between 1933 and 1939," the authors write, making the case that such a "monetary shock" should have returned the economy to normalcy. They invoke the authority of well-known macroeconomists Robert Lucas and Leonard Rapping, who once proclaimed that "positive monetary shocks should have produced a strong recovery, with employment returning to its normal levels by 1936."



But as Murray Rothbard showed in America's Great Depression, it was the easy money policies of the early and mid 1920s that created all the malinvestment that was the trigger for the Great Depression. The only wise thing to have done was to allow the liquidation of hundreds of overcapitalized businesses to occur. Instead, the Fed increased the monetary base by 100 percent in five years, causing more of the same overcapitalization problems that were the source of the problem in the first place.

On top of that, virtually every single one of FDR's "New Deal" policies made things even worse and prolonged the Depression. Austrian economists have known this for decades, but at least the neoclassical model builders have finally caught on—we can hope.

Cole and Ohanian apparently emerged from the rarified world of macroeconomic model building for a long enough period of time to discover that the so-called First New Deal (1933–34) was one giant cartel scheme, whereby the government attempted to enforce cartel pricing and output reductions in hundreds of industries and in agriculture. This of course was well documented in John T. Flynn's book, The Roosevelt Myth, first published in 1948. Henry Hazlitt had also written about it some fifteen years earlier. "New Deal cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery, accounting for about 60 percent of the difference between actual output and trend output," the authors write.

The fact that it has taken "mainstream" neoclassical economists so long to recognize this fact is truly astounding. For generations their own neoclassical textbooks have taught that cartels "restrict output" to raise prices. It has also been no secret that the heart and soul of the First New Deal was to use the coercive powers of government to prop up wages and prices by cartelizing the entire economy.

FDR and his advisors mistakenly believed that the Depression was caused by low prices, therefore, high prices—enforced by threats of violence, coercion and intimidation by the state—would be the "solution." Moreover, it is hardly a secret that if less production takes place, fewer workers will be needed by employers and unemployment will subsequently be higher. Thus, the First New Deal could not possibly have been anything but a gigantic unemployment-producing scheme according to standard neoclassical economic theory.

FDR's tripling of taxes, his regulation of business, and his relentless anti-business propaganda also contributed to a worsening of the Great Depression, but his labor policies were probably the most harmful to the employment prospects of American workers. In this regard the most disappointing thing about the Cole-Ohanian article is that they do not even cite the pioneering work of Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway—Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth Century America—first published in 1993.

Indeed, it is somewhat scandalous that they do not cite this well-known work while making essentially the same arguments that Vedder and Gallaway do. They recite many of the same facts about labor policy: The NIRA codes established minimum wages for less-skilled and higher-skilled workers alike; employers were told that they must bargain collectively with unions, which were given myriad legislated advantages in the bargaining process, all enforced by the newly-created National Labor Relations Board. All of these policies made labor more expensive. Consequently, as the economic law of demand informs us, the inevitable result had to be less employment.

Strike activity doubled from 14 million strike days in 1936 to 28 million a year later, and wages rose by about 15 percent in 1937 alone. The union/nonunion wage differential increased from 5 percent in 1933 to 23 percent by 1940. Newly-enacted Social Security payroll and unemployment insurance taxes made employment even more expensive. What all of this means is that during a period of weak or declining derived demand for labor, government policy pushed up the price of labor very significantly, causing employers to purchase less and less of it.

Vedder and Gallaway conducted an econometric evaluation of these labor cost-increasing policies and concluded that most of the abnormal unemployment of the 1930s would have been avoided were it not for these policies. They estimated that by 1940 the unemployment rate was eight percentage points higher than it would have been without the legislation-induced growth of unionism and government-mandated employment costs. They conclude that "The Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs" (p. 141).

Cole and Ohanian reach the exact same conclusions, but express them in the somewhat convoluted language of the "top economic journals": "New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression . . . . Instead, the joint policies of increasing labor's bargaining power and linking collusion with paying high wages prevented a normal recovery by creating rents and an inefficient insider-outsider friction that raised wages significantly and restricted employment . . . . the abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s."

This last conclusion—that the abandonment of FDR's policies "coincided" with the recovery of the 1940s is very well documented by another author who is also ignored by Cole and Ohanian, Robert Higgs. In "Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War" (Independent Review, Spring 1997), Higgs showed that it was the relative neutering of New Deal policies, along with a reduction (in absolute dollars) of the federal budget from $98.4 billion in 1945 to $33 billion in 1948, that brought forth the economic recovery. Private-sector production increased by almost one-third in 1946 alone, as private capital investment increased for the first time in eighteen years.

In short, it was capitalism that finally ended the Great Depression, not FDR's hair-brained cartel, wage-increasing, unionizing, and welfare state expanding policies. It's good to see that the Journal of Political Economy, the University of Chicago, and UCLA are finally beginning to catch up to the libertarian scholarship of Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, Robert Higgs, Jim Powell (author of FDR's Folly) and such predecessors of theirs as Henry Hazlitt, John T. Flynn, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, William H. Hutt, Benjamin Anderson, and others associated with the Austrian School.

Better late than never.


http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1623

Oh, of course.

Since the song says so, it has to be true!

:rolleyes:

+1 for Sean Smith's post. An informed fair syopsis of the New Deal.

+1 for Sean Smith's post.

Wow, that NEVER happens around here, no matter HOW smart I am! :D

Some thoughts:

Finding old people who liked FDR doesn't prove anything either way. You can find old Russians who are nostalgic for Stalin, too. That's why they are called "Cults of Personality," instead of "Failed Attempts to Make the Public Like You." And with countries with large populations, you can ALWAYS cherry-pick people to say that so-and-so politician helped them, regardless of what he was doing to the country as a whole.

Can you imagine bending down to a dirty faced hungry four-year-old and telling her that you know she's hungry, but its just not right to give her daddy a government job so that he can feed her?

Talk about relying on an irrational, hysterical appeal to emotions to pull you through an "argument." Might work on juries, but juries are dumber than average. ;)

If FDR's policies did more harm to the nation as a whole than they did good, can you imagine telling a few MILLION people that you know they're hungry, but you can't help them because you torpedoed the economy's overall prospects in a desperate attempt to create the illusion of forward motion so you could get re-elected in 1936?

Oopsie. :D

Overall factors to consider in FDR's favor:

Extremist parties (i.e. Communists and Fascists) never really got anywhere in the U.S., even during the height of the Depression, while they either got a solid foothold in, or outright took over, most developed countries. Labor (read: hardcore Socialist at the time) emerged as a real party in the UK; Communists literally taking orders from Moscow were a real political force in France; Spain, Italy and Germany were Fascist, and of course Russia was communist. The Far Eastern scene was dominated by Japan, a wierd totalitarian oligarchy thing with a god-emperor, and a China where Mao, evil commie bastard even by commie standards, was emerging as the preeminent force.

[Note: I'm not literally comparing Labor in the UK to Stalinist, Fascist or Maoist mass murderers, but Labor back then did make FDR look like, well, Calvin Coolidge.]

This is probably the strongest argument for the "lesser evil" theory. It ISN'T the same as arguing that FDRs policies were right, or even good overall, it just kind of puts them in the context of the times.

Quote:
Can you imagine bending down to a dirty faced hungry four-year-old and telling her that you know she's hungry, but its just not right to give her daddy a government job so that he can feed her?

Reply:
Can you imagine bending down to a dirty faced hungry four-year-old from the South and telling her that you know she's hungry, but its more important for FDR's reelection campaign to take her daddy's job away and give another little girl's daddy a government job because the other little girl lives in a swing state?

Please y'all should do a search on central banking.

For the constitutionalists it's why the federal gummint is only supposed to have the power to coin money. (They'd gone through a bunch of bank fraud/collapse and whaterver prior to the revolution.)

Moving along, we got the Federal Reserve act, giving us central banking (private central banking, no less) after about 100 years of battle against such. google up Jekyl Island and Federal Reserve for more on that conspiracy.

Next, since a bank lending money kinda sorta wants some proof of income from the lendee, we got the 16th ammendment through on a wing, a prayer, and a bit of vote counting legerdemain. For fun, do a google on Philander Knox...

less than 15 years later, we get a HUGE example of fractional reserve lending (banking practice) that collapses the economy. see mises.org on fractional reserve lending.

Much of US wealth dissappears...

Then, in 33 we get FDR taking us off the gold standard and making it illegal for private citizens to own gold. More US weath dissappears through government confiscation of gold.

Now, do note the timing:
We next get the FDIC which guarantees banks from collapse, not with gold certificates or silver certificates but just plain old paper rectangles with some green and black ink lawfully declared "Legal Tender". Which you might also google up for a bit of free education.

The commies/socialists wanted to eliminate private ownership of arms, but there remained a few believing in the constitution so we only got a tax on full auto weapons and a couple of other non-PC armaments via the missuse of the the commerce clause. Thus the National Firearms Act. The NFA could have been found unconstitutional, but a lawyer representing absent felon clients didn't bother to show up. (Miller)...

Our current crop of socialists/communists is just not bright enough (due to inbreading, socialized education, whatever) to conspire at the levels attained prior to 1940.

Modern US history in a nutshell, eh wot?

You could then go on to learn about inflation & hidden taxation but I wouldn't want to spoil the rest of your afternoon. (Hint) More US wealth dissappears, and continues doing so.

Dave

"As for LBJ, please. There's no credible way anyone can argue he was successful at anything except playing politics or, according to those who knew him best, eliminating rivals at any cost."

Did you ever read a book titled A Texan Looks At Lyndon? I have a copy. He was an "honest" crook. He stood up and said, "I'm going to rob you." At least you knew where you stood with that particular #@!##*#*!@##***!

I attended his last political rally on Congress Ave in Austin the night before the 1964 election. He was a great....politician. That is the lowest comment I can make about anyone.

But, how did we get to LBJ?? I know a lot of stories about him having lived in his back ayrd during a lot of his presidency.

Now. Let me tell you about the time Eleanor ran over my brother-in-law's dog.

Ok, Ok. I'll shut up.

rr

Franklin Delano Mussolini

by Vin Suprynowicz

In answer to my column of April 10, discussing how the giant and inflationary Ponzi schemes of the central government in Washington City drain the value of our savings, one Herman Gordon of Las Vegas wrote in:

"The April 10 commentary of Vin Suprynowicz ... does beg for a little clarification and correction. ... Vin claims that President Roosevelt ‘pretty much invented inflation as we know it today.’ In some murky way, Vin ties Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid with the fact that prices are much higher today than they were during the New Deal. Why doesn’t it occur to him that prices are higher today in every country in the world? Whether they have social security and minimum wages or not, their prices are higher. Unless Vin has a theory or explanation or some kind of evidence that the United States in the Thirties (which did not yet surpass Great Britain as the leading economic government in the world) could cause inflation worldwide, he ought to more careful about throwing around such accusations. What would be the mechanics for causing such world wide inflation – our purchase of gold, our going into debt, our going out of deficits, our establishing social and economic programs like minimum wages or social security way after other countries, our productivity, our lack of productivity, we imported too much, we exported too much, what, what, Mr. Suprynowicz? ...

"If Vin would pay a little more attention to facts and to ordinary research and maybe some common sense, he would be less apt to broadcast opinions based on misinformation and end up suggesting President Roosevelt a Fascist in the column.

"Some Fascist! Whereas all other Fascist rulers would not abide a newspaper (if any weren’t state-run) that was critical of the government, does Vin know that the majority of newspapers in this country supported Roosevelt’s opponents in all four of his elections?

"And why does he associate Roosevelt with Fascism? Because there was something in Mussolini’s program which was similar to something in Roosevelt’s support of the National Recovery Act, and that something is – look out now, everybody – something to do with government regulating business. Of course, that would mean that all industrialized democracies including the post-Rooseveltian U.S. administrations are fascistic."

Thus endeth Mr. Gordon’s missive.

ROOSEVELT ‘TURNED ALL CITIZENS HOLDING GOLD INTO CRIMINALS’
I have never quite understood why the mass of unread but always self-righteous socialists feel free to call on me to provide them, uncompensated, with the economic and historical education they have failed to obtain for themselves – except, of course, that they ARE socialists, who believe someone else "owes" them anything they want, and without asking them to so much as bother trotting down to their local tax-supported library to look it up.

But let us begin, at least, the first stage of Mr. Gordon’s evidently long-neglected education.

Columnist George S. Smith explains (and note that his facts are well footnoted):

"During his (1932) campaign, Roosevelt pledged 100 percent support of the gold standard, as did the Republicans. But on March 9, 1933, Congress abdicated its responsibility and gave Roosevelt full discretionary powers over money and banking. He didn’t waste time using them.

"On March 11, 1933, he issued an order forbidding banks to make gold payments. On April 5, Roosevelt ordered all citizens to surrender their gold – no person could hold more than $100 in gold coins, except for collector’s coins. He also made it unlawful to export gold for payment abroad, unless done through the Treasury. The penalty for defying Roosevelt was 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. (‘The Great Gold Robbery,’ James Bovard.)

"‘It became clear to governments that they could not afford to allow people to own and keep their gold,’ Murray Rothbard explains. ‘Government could never cement its power over a nation’s currency, if the people, when in need, could repudiate the fiat paper and turn to gold for money.’ (What Has Government Done to Our Money? Murray N. Rothbard.)

"On June 5, 1933, Roosevelt signed a resolution he had introduced in Congress, nullifying the gold clause in all government and private contracts. It meant what it said – that no one had the right to demand payment in gold for any debt. (‘The Last Great Bubble – Counterfeiting the Dollar,’ M. A. Nystrom.) The Constitution says that no state shall ‘make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts’ – a clear challenge to the president’s actions. When Roosevelt asked Senator Thomas P. Gore from Oklahoma what he thought of the resolution, the blind statesman replied: ‘Why, that’s just plain stealing, isn’t it Mr. President?’ (‘Economics and the Public Welfare, Benjamin M. Anderson, D. Van Nostrand Company, New York, 1949, p. 319.) Roosevelt succeeded in having the Senator unseated in the 1936 elections.

"On Jan. 30, 1934 Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act into law, which transferred title of the Federal Reserve Banks’ deposits of gold to the U.S. Treasury. ... With this act, Roosevelt completed confiscation of the citizens’ gold.

"As James Bovard observes, ‘Citizens had accepted a paper currency based on the government’s pledge to redeem it in gold at $20 per ounce; then, when Roosevelt decided to default on that pledge, he also felt obliged to turn all citizens holding gold into criminals.’ Roosevelt also condemned them as selfish traitors.

"One day later Roosevelt reduced the gold content of the dollar by 41 percent, raising the price of gold from $20.67 per ounce to $35.00 an ounce. The devaluation resulted in a $2.8 billion ‘bonus’ for the government.

"Government’s policy of debasing our money, which the U.S. Coinage Act of 1792 made punishable by death (Nystrom) hit full stride under Roosevelt. As the world’s reserve currency since 1945, the U.S. dollar has been playing the part of gold in international trade. Almost no one seriously questions fiat money anymore. ...

"Has a managed fiat currency enhanced our prosperity?" columnist Smith asks.

"Here’s one clue to the answer. Go to ‘How Much is That Worth Today?’ (Economic History Resources) and try a few computations. You’ll find that a dollar in 2001 was roughly equivalent to five cents in 1901. But a dollar in 1901 had the same value as $1.50 in 1801!

"In other words, under a mostly market-driven money system, the dollar actually appreciated in value over the course of the 19th century – a period during which average incomes rose and the population greatly expanded. Under government-controlled fiat money, after nearly a century of war, waste, wealth-theft, and welfare, with many families now needing two incomes to live decently, the dollar today is almost worthless.

"Next time you think government is completely inept, think again." columnist Smith concludes. "To rob so many of so much, while keeping complaints relegated to the lunatic fringe, requires uncommon skill of deception."

Thus ends our introductory selection from Mr. Smith.

‘TAKING A FEW PAGES FROM MUSSOLINI ...’

How did these actions of the tyrant Roosevelt resemble what Mussolini had done in Italy after 1925 – a connection which our letter-writer Mr. Gordon seems to find absurd, based on the notion that Mussolini wore a different colored suit, or had different tastes in newspapers, or some such "murky" distinction?

Economics professor Timothy D. Terrell asks us, when Roosevelt devalued the dollar from 20 to the ounce of gold to 35 for the ounce of gold overnight (agreeing that "Morally, this was no different than robbery"): "Who got to spend the extra $14.33 per ounce? The federal government, of course. About $4 billion showed up on the government’s books through these accounting shenanigans. Enron and Worldcom have nothing on a government with a printing press.

But, most significantly, "Roosevelt completely missed the real cause of the Great Depression," Prof. Terrell goes on to explain. "He noticed that prices were falling, and figured that falling prices meant that firms were not getting much revenue, and that firms therefore would have to cut the wages paid to employees. Employees would then have fewer dollars to spend, and so the demand for products would be lower. The economy would spiral downward. ... Falling prices were seen as the source of economic problems, rather than a needed correction of deeper problems. ... So, taking a few pages from Mussolini’s fascist reforms in Italy, Roosevelt began to group American industries into cartels. These cartels, called Code Authorities, operated under government supervision and had immense authority. They could set quality, prices, and output quantities for the industry. Lower-priced competition was effectively outlawed.

"This program’s failings are too many to elaborate on here, but John Flynn’s book The Roosevelt Myth would be a good start for someone wanting more on this topic. In brief, the cartelization scheme was economic nonsense. ...

"Mercifully, this program (run as the National Recovery Administration) was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935. But the monetary side of Roosevelt’s economic strategy was still in place. And, long-term, it would not be difficult to say that the abandonment of the gold standard in the 1930s was more destructive than Roosevelt’s alphabet soup of federal programs.

"When the American people were deprived of their ability to exchange currency for actual, physical gold ... a major check against the government’s propensity to steal had been lost. Less than 40 years after Roosevelt’s momentous first year in office, Nixon eliminated the last vestiges of the gold standard. Just a few years later, the Fed produced such large increases in the money supply that price inflation became a matter of serious concern. Today the effects are still with us. ... Creating money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve does, destroys the value of savings and transfers wealth into the hands of the state and the state’s friends. ...

"Inflation ... is dangerous both to the economy and to freedom. As Rousas J. Rushdoony pointed out in Roots of Inflation:

"‘Inflation is an act of state, a very highly desirable act of state from the standpoint of politicians and the bureaucracy, because it increases vastly the powers of the state. The rise of the modern totalitarian state has its economic origin in the abandonment of gold coinage for paper money. As the creator of fiat money, of instant money by means of legalized counterfeiting of wealth, the state is always the wealthiest and most powerful force in society.’ "

Thus ends today’s reading from Professor Terrell.

‘COLLAPSE IN THE DOLLARS PURCHASING POWER ...’

In our continuing attempt to provide Mr. Gordon with at least a modest summary of the ongoing economic crimes launched by the tyrant Roosevelt, which he declines to look up for himself, let us turn now to well-known historian, author and frequent Wall Street Journal contributor James Bovard (author of the above-cited "The Great Gold Robbery"), who explains the impact of Roosevelt’s gold seizure:

"The refusal to convert paper dollars into gold meant that the government was ‘free’ to flood the country with paper money and sabotage the currency’s value. The stability of the value of currency is one of the clearest measures of a government’s trustworthiness. Before Roosevelt took office, Americans clearly recognized the moral implications of inflation. Vice President Calvin Coolidge had bluntly declared in 1922: ‘Inflation is repudiation.’ Inflation is a tax whereby government prints extra money to finance its deficit spending. The value of money is largely determined by the ratio of money to goods; if the quantity of money increases faster than the increase in the amount of goods, the result is an increase in the ratio of money to goods and an increase in prices. Thus, the government’s printing presses devalue people’s paychecks and effectively allow government to default on the value of its debt.

"The threat of inflation was invoked in the early 1940s to justify imposing payroll tax withholding (protecting people from their own paychecks) and in the 1970s to impose price controls over the entire economy. (Charlotte Twight, ‘Evolution of Federal Income Tax Withholding,’ Cato Journal, Winter 1995.) Apparently, politicians who decide to flood the money supply automatically become entitled to increase their coercion of their victims who hold increasingly worthless currency.

"Since Roosevelt banned citizens from owning gold in 1933 and forced people to rely on the unbacked promises of politicians for the value of their currency, the dollar has lost about 93 percent of its purchasing power. (For information on the deterioration of the dollar’s purchasing power, see the Web site of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/cpihome.htm.) The collapse in the dollar’s purchasing power severely disrupted the ability of scores of millions of Americans to plan their own lives and save for retirement," Mr. Bovard continues. "Though inflation has slowed since 1980, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by over 50 percent in subsequent years according to the government’s own numbers ... making a mockery of people’s attempts to calculate and save for the future. ...

"Roosevelt’s gold seizure was based on the doctrine that in order for government to save the people, it must be permitted to breach all the promises it made to the people. According to modern conventional wisdom, government has no obligation to do justice or treat any specific individual citizen fairly – instead, government’s only duty is to achieve ‘social justice’ or some other abstraction perfectly suited for evasion."

‘TAXES WHICH CONFISCATE THE SAVINGS OF EVERY CITIZEN ...’

Since Professor Terrell mentioned columnist John Flynn’s The Roosevelt Myth (Devin-Adair, 1948) above, let’s wrap up Mr. Gordon’s little introductory survey course by turning to page 414 of that most valuable resource on the Roosevelt regime, where Mr. Flynn explains that prior to the Roosevelt regime:

"We lived in a system which depended for its expansion upon private investment in private enterprise. Today we live in a system which depends for its expansion and vitality upon the government. This is a pre-war European importation — imported at the moment when it had fallen into complete disintegration in Europe. In America today every fourth person depends for his livelihood upon employment either directly by the government or indirectly in some industry supported by government funds."

(Flynn was writing in 1948, remember, and last revised his book in 1956. Add today’s substantial federal funding of all the local government youth propaganda camps – "public schools" – not to mention the vast numbers now dependent on the Social Security, Social Security Disability, Medicare, and Medicaid Ponzi schemes, and today that percentage of government leeches should surely be "one in two" – V.S.)

"In this substituted system the government confiscates by taxes or borrowings the savings of all the citizens and invests them in non-wealth-producing enterprises in order to create work," Mr. Flynn continues. "Behold the picture of the American economy today: taxes which confiscate the savings of every citizen, a public debt of 250 billion dollars as against a pre-Roosevelt debt of 19 billions, a government budget of 40 billions instead of four before Roosevelt, inflation doubling the prices and reducing the lower-bracket employed workers to a state of pauperism as bad as that of the unemployed in the depression, more people on various kinds of government relief than when we had 11 million unemployed, Americans trapped in the economic disasters and the political quarrels of every nation on earth and a system of permanent militarism loosely resembling what we beheld with horror in Europe for decades, bureaucrats swarming over every field of life and the President calling for more power, more price-fixing, more regulation and more billions. Does this look like the traditional American scene? Or does it not look rather like the system built by Bismarck in Germany in the last century and imitated by the lesser Bismarcks in Europe?"

What Roosevelt had created, Mr. Flynn brilliantly foresaw in 1948, was "that kind of state-supported economic system that will continue to devour a little at a time the private system until it disappears altogether." In a word: fascism (an economic term the appropriateness of which is in no way refuted by the absence of goose-steeping storm troopers in the streets, nor the willingness of an administration to tolerate some polite and gelded opposition newspapers.)

And to think that it all started with Roosevelt seizing the people’s gold.

But should that really be such a surprise? Let us conclude, for today, by looking at what another powerful mid-20th century leader had to say about uncoupling a nation’s currency from gold:

"Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We’ll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration." ~ Adolf Hitler

I'll be saving that piece for future use. thx.

Oh, note, if one demands it's required that one have "been there" to make commentary on FDR then FDR is the most abysmal human being to ever walk the earth, according to my grandparents and other extended family who were there. I never heard a good word about him till probably a sixth grade text book. My own subsequent research has backed up those perceptions without exception.

Other note, for Control Group:

Am I supposed to assume from that statement that you're a LEO who deals with eyewitnesses on a regular basis? If so, I certainly had no idea you were. My apologies for implying an ignorance which, apparently, doesn't exist.

Unless you personally know someone any claim is suspect on the internet. I'll guarantee you some percentage of those on THR claiming to work in some aspect of "law enforcement" have never had closer contact with the law than receiving and paying their traffic tickets. It's that way on all political and gun forums. Your job is figuring out who's who... :D

My dad called him a would-be dictator along the lines of Mussolini, Hitler, or Stalin. He just didn't get as far as they did.