My apologies for making two posts so closely together. I was arguing with a friend who calls himself a Republican. He was brought up in the Mormon church, so he’s a Republican for religious reasons only. Nothing against the Mormon church, but I’m just telling you for this reason. He always talks about hating Obama, but he started defending the New Deal in our conversation the other day. He said something along the lines of, “Without FDR we wouldn’t have jumped out of the Great Depression as quickly as we did. We wouldn’t even be a superpower without him.” How he supports FDR but hates Obama makes no clear sense to me until I realized how little he knew about economics and history. Anyway, would anyone be willing to suggest some links or make detailed posts that rip apart the New Deal and Great Society? I tried explaining to him how FDR issued a 90% top tax rate, stole citizens’ gold from them, and how these welfare programs are bankrupting us now, but he wouldn’t understand. Hopefully you guys can help me out in any way you can. Thank you.
In this video, UCLA professor Ohanian goes into specific FDR policies that prolonged the depression–keeping wages artifically high, which prolonged unemployment, and cartelizing industries, which resulted in less competition.
Also, FDR’s policies created a lot uncertainty in business community in much the same way Obama’s policies have created uncertainty today. Consequently, businesses decided to postpone investing. Robert Higgs goes here into some of the FDR’s blunders:
Jonathan Catalan goes here into some of the economic fallacies of the Great Depression:
Sounds like he understands everything he wants to understand. You said “wouldn’t” as opposed to “couldn’t”. Does he want to learn about these things or not? From what you posted, you could recommend 1,000 links and he wouldn’t read any of them.
You may need consider a change in your approach. Ask him why he believes what he believes. Don’t try to convice him about anything directly. Whan he answers you, point out the flaws in his thinking. Socratic method…
And Brian, not all of us Mormons are uninformed I don’t like either party, but I’m really tired of having to always vote for the lesser of the two evils.
But just because someone is Mormon doesn’t make them automatically a Republican/Democrat/Conservative/Social Liberal.
I wasn’t meaning to say anything bad about the Mormon church! I just meant in his case it seemed his political beliefs were all based on socially conservative beliefs derived from his religion. No offense meant
I don’t like either party, but I’m really tired of having to always vote for the lesser of the two evils.