The Right Targets FDR

[one...two...tree 2,762]

In keeping with the recent trend, Fox News personality Brit Hume became the latest in a series of conservatives to demonstrate bizarre confusion about the Great Depression. Hume insisted this morning that "the New Deal -- everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed." He added, "President [Franklin] Roosevelt waged what could only be called a jihad against private enterprise." The right has been repeating similar nonsense for a couple of months now. It's demonstrably ridiculous, but that's not stopping them.

David Sirota has written a couple of excellent items lately, responding to the absurd Republican talking points related to FDR and the Great Depression, but yesterday, to his credit, MSNBC's David Shuster did an entire segment on the patently false conservative argument.

We don't often see this kind of fact-checking segment on national television, so kudos to Shuster and MSNBC.

(For more background on this, also note this Paul Krugman column from November, which notes the "intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse.")

Why does the right bother? It's hard to say for sure, but there are probably a few aspects to this. First, FDR was a Democrat, addressing a devastating economic crisis handed to him by a failed Republican president. This, of course, sets up Obama as Roosevelt, which the GOP would like to avoid.

Second, the conservative ideology demands that FDR's approach to the Great Depression was fundamentally flawed, because it was premised on ideas like increased spending, public works, Social Security, and stronger unions.

It's easy to mock Fox News and the rest of the Republicans for pushing obvious nonsense, but I'm afraid the economic conditions are so dire, the right's ridiculous sense of history is actually kind of dangerous. Americans, I hope, know better, but I'd feel a whole lot better if there wasn't an organized campaign from conservatives trying to convince Americans to reject the lifesaver while the nation drowns.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

[alienlovechild 75]

The New Deal didn't end the Great Depression- the U.S. entrance into WWII did that. The Democrats want to rewrite history as cover for anything Obama does in the future by fueling fears and then claiming Obama saved us all.

Why does the right bother? It's hard to say for sure, but there are probably a few aspects to this. First, FDR was a Democrat, addressing a devastating economic crisis handed to him by a failed Republican president. This, of course, sets up Obama as Roosevelt, which the GOP would like to avoid.

Pretty fair from the truth with Bush and a Democratically-controlled Congress blowing trillions to stimulate the economy even before Obama ups the ante with yet more spending and emulating Bush for better or worse.

Edited January 8, 2009 by alienlovechild

[one...two...tree 2,762]

New Deal economics

Everybody's talking new New Deal these days — and, predictably, the FDR-haters are out in force, with all the usual claims about FDR having actually made the Great Depression worse. (To the right, way back when, FDR was "That Man." Now Obama is "that one." Interesting.)

Eric Rauchway is all over this. Basically, the anti-FDR argument on the data is based on (a) considering people employed by the WPA "unemployed" (even though they were getting paid, and building public works that are in use to this day) plus (.b always focusing on 1938 — the year in which the economy suffered a serious setback from the progress of the previous four years.

Let me offer two pictures, beyond what Eric provides, to clarify things.

First, here's real GDP (in logs) from 1929 to 1941, plus the trend. (That's to bypass the employment nonsense). You can see that the economy made up a lot of the output gap before the 1938 setback, but by no means all.

Incomplete recovery Now, you might say that the incomplete recovery shows that "pump-priming", Keynesian fiscal policy doesn't work. Except that the New Deal didn't pursue Keynesian policies. Properly measured, that is, by using the cyclically adjusted deficit, fiscal policy was only modestly expansionary, at least compared with the depth of the slump. Here's the Cary Brown estimates, from Brad DeLong:

Limited fiscal force Net stimulus of around 3 percent of GDP — not much, when you've got a 42 percent output gap. FDR might have been more of a Keynesian if Keynesian economics had existed — The General Theory wasn't published until 1936. Note in particular that in 1937-38 FDR was persuaded to do the "responsible" thing and cut back — and that's what led to the bad year in 1938, which to the WSJ crowd defines the New Deal.

Implications for Obama: be inspired by FDR, but don't imitate him slavishly. In particular, your economic policy should be bolder, not more cautious.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/0...deal-economics/

Edited January 8, 2009 by Mister Fancypants

[alienlovechild 75]

Tax Federal GNP Unemp.

Year Receipts Spending Growth Rate

-------------------------------------------------

1929 -- -- -- 3.2% < Hoover era, Great Depression begins

1930 4.2% 3.4% - 9.4% 8.7

1931 3.7 4.3 - 8.5 15.9

1932 2.9 7.0 -13.4 23.6

1933 3.5 8.1 - 2.1 24.9 < FDR, New Deal begins; contraction ends March

1934 4.9 10.8 + 7.7 21.7

1935 5.3 9.3 + 8.1 20.1

1936 5.1 10.6 +14.1 16.9

1937 6.2 8.7 + 5.0 14.3 < recession begins, May

1938 7.7 7.8 - 4.5 19.0 < recession ends, June

1939 7.2 10.4 + 7.9 17.2

1940 6.9 9.9

1941 7.7 12.1

1942 10.3 24.8

1943 13.7 44.8

1944 21.7 45.3

1945 21.3 43.7

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm

17.2% unemployment was a benchmark of success? Also there was not much a national deficit when FDR started and the U.S. was biggest creditor nation in the world. The now the U.S. has a rising debt compared to GDP. The economy was going to improve anyway and U.S. economic numbers would have improved over time. No doubt the U.S. economy will improve sometime in the next 4 years no matter who was president.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

What's the difference between left and right? I keep forgetting.

[Niels Bohr 72]

This guy is a f*cktard.

FDR have contributed so much for US Growth. The effect of the current situation lies within the scope of the recent decade.

[Danno 1,228]

We don't often see this kind of fact-checking segment on national television, so kudos to Shuster and MSNBC.

I nominate this as "Quote of the week".

Of course we don't see "this kind of fact checking"..... unless they are trying to "drill" a person or idea contrary to their left of center, view.

This is what so many complain about!

Edited January 9, 2009 by Danno

[NickD 203]

The New Deal didn't end the Great Depression- the U.S. entrance into WWII did that.

Really an incredible thing, mom told me my dad was earning 17 bucks a week before the war, 120 bucks during the war working in a defense plant, then back to 17 bucks a week after the war.

Can't really say that war was a profitable adventure for the USA, not exactly like we invested a few bucks to enslave Germany and Japan, took all of their goodies and brought it back here. On the contrary, we blew everything up they had, and even spent more bucks putting it back together again. War is extremely unproductive, and what we did make was either destroyed or dumped in the oceans.

Now why couldn't we have done the same thing by making widgets, putting everybody to work, and just dumping those into the oceans, or simply have blown them up? Think about that, the end result is the same. And nobody would have to gotten hurt or killed in the process.

One factor is our income tax, as long as money is in circulation, the government regardless of the rate of taxes, still gets it all back. I earn a buck, give say 20% of that back to the government, and you get 80 cents and give 16 cents of that back to the government, you have 64 cents left, spend that so the next guy only has 51 cents left and so forth until the government gets all of it back. In the mean time, we are improving our life by buying stuff and everybody is happy working and spending money. And it doesn't have to be the bare necessities of life, a good share of our money is spent on frivolous stuff.

Did hear an economist last night on PBS radio state the our 1.2 trillion dollar debt is nothing, Wall Street, while acting broke could pay that off without even missing it. This brings me back to the simple fact that since this nation was created that always less than 10% of the population controlled over 90% of the cash. It's my conclusion that with the outbreak of WW II, these super rich guys were concerned about their own welfare, and let go a few percentage points of their bucks, making the rest of us poor slobs think we are getting rich.

The wealth is there according to him, just a matter of them letting go a small fraction of it to get this country going again, one thing we never had in this country, FDR and that other Roosevelt guy, Theodore, I think, tried to take measures to level the playing field, those leader we had since JFK gave us that unlevel playing field back again, and this includes both the democrats and the republicans.

We don't have to go to war, can just make widgets and dump those in the ocean to get this country moving again, think about it!!! If we can get the super rich to part with a small percentage of their wealth.

[Danno 1,228]

The New Deal didn't end the Great Depression- the U.S. entrance into WWII did that.

Really an incredible thing, mom told me my dad was earning 17 bucks a week before the war, 120 bucks during the war working in a defense plant, then back to 17 bucks a week after the war.

Can't really say that war was a profitable adventure for the USA, not exactly like we invested a few bucks to enslave Germany and Japan, took all of their goodies and brought it back here. On the contrary, we blew everything up they had, and even spent more bucks putting it back together again. War is extremely unproductive, and what we did make was either destroyed or dumped in the oceans.

Now why couldn't we have done the same thing by making widgets, putting everybody to work, and just dumping those into the oceans, or simply have blown them up? Think about that, the end result is the same. And nobody would have to gotten hurt or killed in the process.

One factor is our income tax, as long as money is in circulation, the government regardless of the rate of taxes, still gets it all back. I earn a buck, give say 20% of that back to the government, and you get 80 cents and give 16 cents of that back to the government, you have 64 cents left, spend that so the next guy only has 51 cents left and so forth until the government gets all of it back. In the mean time, we are improving our life by buying stuff and everybody is happy working and spending money. And it doesn't have to be the bare necessities of life, a good share of our money is spent on frivolous stuff.

Did hear an economist last night on PBS radio state the our 1.2 trillion dollar debt is nothing, Wall Street, while acting broke could pay that off without even missing it. This brings me back to the simple fact that since this nation was created that always less than 10% of the population controlled over 90% of the cash. It's my conclusion that with the outbreak of WW II, these super rich guys were concerned about their own welfare, and let go a few percentage points of their bucks, making the rest of us poor slobs think we are getting rich.

The wealth is there according to him, just a matter of them letting go a small fraction of it to get this country going again, one thing we never had in this country, FDR and that other Roosevelt guy, Theodore, I think, tried to take measures to level the playing field, those leader we had since JFK gave us that unlevel playing field back again, and this includes both the democrats and the republicans.

We don't have to go to war, can just make widgets and dump those in the ocean to get this country moving again, think about it!!! If we can get the super rich to part with a small percentage of their wealth.

NickD please, if you insist on making so many wacked statements... at least break them up into several post so it is easier for others to handle.

Let me start with your first glaring observation about WW2.

When WW2 was over there was one country left virtually untouched, THe USA.

We not only sold military hardware to Europeans on lend-lease but after it was over, we were the only ones left to supply the rebuilding effort.

We "were" a manufacturing power-house.

Those days are over.

[peejay 327]

In keeping with the recent trend...

Recent trend? Lots of people have had a ####### for FDR over a multitude of issues for many, many years.

The latest revelation that he personally knew about the systematic murder of US citizens in Stalinist Russia and his ambassador refused to aid them even when they fled to the US embassy in Moscow for protection. As soon as they were kicked out of the embassy, the NKVD arrested them to be summarily shot or to be worked and starved to death in the meat grinder of the Gulag system.

But some people worship FDR...so it must have been for a worthwhile cause.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

In keeping with the recent trend...

Recent trend? Lots of people have had a ####### for FDR over a multitude of issues for many, many years.

The latest revelation that he personally knew about the systematic murder of US citizens in Stalinist Russia and his ambassador refused to aid them even when they fled to the US embassy in Moscow for protection. As soon as they were kicked out of the embassy, the NKVD arrested them to be summarily shot or to be worked and starved to death in the meat grinder of the Gulag system.

But some people worship FDR...so it must have been for a worthwhile cause.

Policies, peejay....we're talking about FDR's economic policies.

[peejay 327]

In keeping with the recent trend...

Recent trend? Lots of people have had a ####### for FDR over a multitude of issues for many, many years.

The latest revelation that he personally knew about the systematic murder of US citizens in Stalinist Russia and his ambassador refused to aid them even when they fled to the US embassy in Moscow for protection. As soon as they were kicked out of the embassy, the NKVD arrested them to be summarily shot or to be worked and starved to death in the meat grinder of the Gulag system.

But some people worship FDR...so it must have been for a worthwhile cause.

Policies, peejay....we're talking about FDR's economic policies.

Nothing new there either. There has always been a school of thought that FDR's programs isn't what revived the American economy. Many have believed for a long time that the economy eventually improved in spite of his many mistakes and big government ways.