He saved America duh…
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020603/fdr-failed-myth
Just thought I would share…
Wow and here I was expecting a real argument and not some silly nonsense based on crude GDP measurements.
I think that one thing we have to realize that FDR ran on the most libertarian platform in the 20th century.
Was he just lying through his teeth? Possibly.
However, by 1933, it’s entirely possible that FDR saw the writing on the wall - fascism and socialism had been in vogue for a very, very long time. In addition, he had just seen the Bonus Army literally lead an armed march on his capital to get welfare handouts. What if Roosevelt had really taken a laissez-faire approach? Maybe the U.S government is overthrown (hey, it happened nearly everywhere else in Europe; granted, it happened in countries that were the most affected by WWI). and a socialist/facsist state is set up. With that in mind, how could he resist when the Serpent (Lord Keynes) starts whispering in his ear “You can give the people their socialism, and still keep capitalism alive, and besides, you can always dismantle it later!”.
FDR was the worst president of the 20th century (if not for Roosevelt, for naught would have been Bush), but he may have been motivated by genuine fear, rather than venality.
Just a thought.
My measure of the depression and New Deal is probably more simplistic than the use of GDP, or the Austrian perspective, but hey, I am from Michigan. I simply say, when did unemployment finally begin to improve? The answer is once FDR had a war to ship people off to fight.
If you had to ask the author of that piece what caused the great depression do you think he would have any clue?
do you care to make a distinction between productive employment and ‘boondoggling’?
I think in terms of time, I do make a distinction. It’s not to say that shipping people off to fight a war is useful or necessary employment, but during and following the war was when we finally saw a sustained drop in the number of those unemployed.