“I may go to the Zoo...what about you?” ~ Dallas59
You’re going to DC?
I think I’ll read this book:
New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton W. Folsom Jr.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Raw-Economic-Damaged/dp/1416592229
Book Reviewer: W. Wirtanen (St. Louis MO):
“...This book is a great addition to “The Forgotten Man” and “FDR’s Follies” in debunking of FDR’s socialist agenda that still haunts us today.
“... Morgantheau, FDR’s close friend, in a 1939 testimony before the Ways and Means Commitee [said]:
“We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it has does not work....I say after eight years of this administration we have as much unemployment as when we started...and an enormous debt to boot.” ..” [20% unemployment at the beginning and 20% unemployment at the end]
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Book Reviewer: DR L. SCHWEIKART (historian):
Burton Folsom, a Professor of History at Hillsdale College, already has one classic to his credit: “Myth of the Robber Barons.” [This book is in its fifth edition, and is widely adopted in college and high school classrooms across the U. S.]
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Robber-Barons-Burton-Folsom/dp/0963020315/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
Now he offers a concise, yet detailed, revision of the Leuchtenberg-Schlesinger myth that Franklin Roosevelt “saved” capitalism.
In both his introduction and concluding remarks, Folsom assesses why the legend arose that Roosevelt had “brought us out of the Depression.”
He engages in a brief analysis of what caused the Great Depression, frequently noting that the economists have left the historians in the dust: the majority of economists today neither think that business failures caused the Great Depression, or that Roosevelt’s policies did much to temper it, let alone solve the crisis.
Folsom assesses adequate blame to Herbert Hoover, though not (as is commonly portrayed) as a wild-eyed laissez-faire capitalist, but as a meddling Progressive in the mold of Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt in many ways merely continues, but greatly expands, Hoover’s programs.
One of the more interesting chapters deals with the NRA and its price fixing schemes. Here we had an agency of the federal government telling tailors what they could charge to hem a pair of pants! The NRA, thankfully, was brought down by a butcher who, in the process of selling chickens, allowed his customers to (imagine this!) select the chicken they wanted. The NRA goons attempted to force him to demand that they blindly take the first chicken that came within reach.
In the subsequent court decision, the NRA was ruled unconstitutional. By that time, at least one businessman, who thought he couldn’t charge the high prices demanded by the NRA or lose his customers, languished in jail, running his business from behind bars.
Folsom covers the better-known distortions of the New Deal-—the minimum wage, Social Security, the banking regulations-—but also reveals how Roosevelt used the IRS to smash political enemies, including editors whose columns he didn’t care for. It’s a chilling image, given talk of re-instituting the modern-day “gag rule” called the “fairness doctrine.” Roosevelt used federal money as much to ensure his re-election as he did to stimulate a recovery, plastering wavering districts with cash until they arrived at the right ballot-box conclusions. Thus, as Folsom shows, the New Deal was not just an economic rebuilding program, but a political weapon designed to ensure the Democrat Party would hold power for much of the 20th century.
A good compliment to Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man,” Folsom sticks more to the specifics of how each piece of legislation retarded recovery. There is no question, when you finish, that Roosevelt stuck most Americans with a “raw deal” to ensure he remained in the White House for more than a decade.
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Book Reviewer: Doug (Washington D.C. area):
Burton Folsom’s New Deal or Raw Deal? is a timely, informative and captivating read on the destructive economic policies on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration. This book is a valuable addition to the growing number of books on how government intervention, not free markets, plunged the United States deep into the Great Depression.
Folsom corrects many common misconceptions about the New Deal and the Great Depression in this book. The first misconception is that President Hoover was a principled advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, Folsom argues, Hoover was a big government Republican. Consider the Smoot-Hawley Act, which imposed unprecedented tariffs on thousands of imported items. Not only did this drastically increase the prices of U.S. imports (hurting U.S. consumers), but it also encouraged European nations to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports (hurting U.S. producers.) Furthermore, Hoover responded to the early onset of the Great Depression with disastrous economic regulations. He endorsed the Federal Farm Board, which issued over $500 million in cotton and wheat subsidies only to have the massive surpluses dumped on an oversaturated world market. Hoover also supposed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which spent over $1.5 billion on bailouts to failing banks and industries.
Another major point of Folsom’s book is that many of FDR’s programs were struck down as unconstitutional. These include the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). The NIRA imposed economy-wide price controls and production regulations on domestic manufacturing. The AAA was similar in spirit, except it focused on price and production controls on agriculture. The extent of the controls evidently became so detailed where, for example, the purchasers of a live chicken were required by law to blindly reach into the coop to randomly choose a chicken. Customers were not free to choose whichever chicken they fancied. Recognizing the absurdity of this, one of the Supreme Court justices quipped “what if the chickens are all on the other side?” before the Supreme Court unanimously ruled the NIRA unconstitutional.
Folsom also emphasizes the crushing tax burdens imposed by the New Deal. Under FDR, the highest income tax rate was 79%, meaning that four out of five earned dollars was confiscated by the government! According to Folsom, FDR also seriously entertained the idea of imposing a 99.5% income tax rate on all who earned over $100,000 in income. Flippantly justifying this, FDR joked that nobody in his administration would ever make that kind of money. Under FDR, the national debt grew more in the 1930s than it grew in the previous 150 years of the existence of the United States. Putting it in other words, Folsom indicates that if $100/minute was deposited into an account the day Columbus discovered North America up until FDR took office, there would not be enough money in this account to fully defray the costs of the New Deal.
The last major point that I will reiterate is the extensive level of corruption of the FDR administration. According to Folsom’s research, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) offered large government handouts to whichever lobbyists ingratiated themselves most with the administration. FDR used the WPA to make or break the careers of public officials, depending on whether they supported him. This corruption rose to such an overt and perverse level that officials at the WPA used to cheerfully greet callers with “Democratic headquarters!” The Hatch Act, which forbids government employees from using their office for political activity, was passed in response to these activities.
If you like FDR, reading this book will shock you. If you already despise FDR, reading this book will reveal how truly appalling his administration was and how in many respects, FDR was like a gangster. In addition to the above, you will learn about how FDR used the IRS to intimidate political opponents, such as the esteemed banker Andrew Mellon as well as FDR’s unscrupulous court-packing scheme. You will learn about the sheer arbitrary nature of FDR’s economic controls. This cannot be better exemplified than how, when advised to increase the unit price of gold from 19 cents to 22 cents, FDR proposed 21 cents since it was his “lucky number”.
Anyone interested in politics and economic history should read this book, before history repeats itself.
“New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton W. Folsom Jr.”
I read this book recently. It really was not anything I already didn’t know since I consider FDR to be the worst President in modern history. He gave us the entitlement mentality. Nothing has been more damaging than that. The book is great reading if you don’t know about the New Deal or its long lasting effects.