FDR's Raw Deal Exposed

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 9.30.03 | Thomas Roeser

[Allan]

Try this:

~[(A->C)^(B->C)^(B->~X)]->(A->X)]

[liberallarry]

(A->C)^(B->C)^(B->~X)]->(A->X) approximately

Roosevelt is a fresh face
Hitler is a fresh face
Hitler is X, approximately
Therefore Roosevelt is X

What's X?

[x]

But those people had food to eat and a place to live. You can call that "counterproductive" all you like but you'll have a hard time persuading people who benefited from them that they were just a huge mistake that never should have been attempted.

True. The problem wasn't so much the expedients FDR came up with, but the fact that his people didn't see them as temporary responses to an emergency, but as a plan for the future. The possibility of using the Depression to get more powers for government on a permanent basis was too tempting to resist.

I don't want to argue other peoples' position for them, but IF they are correct that New Deal programs were counterproductive, then all they did was move the misery around. For all the people that got jobs that way, there were others who were poorer longer because of them. That's what I mean by "counterproductive."

Under ordinary circumstances, I'd agree with you. But during the Depression, virtually nobody had any money coming in. If they "had money" they could only sit on it in their mattress -- or worry about whether it would be there in the bank or stock market tomorrow. So the loser wasn't so much the taxpayer, as future borrowers, or the person who might or might not have been able to make money if the economy picked up.

In other words FDR's policies might well have postponed recovery. But as people had already learned, whether recovery would come any time soon was a very big "if." So the situation was rather different from today.

A dogmatist might argue that whenever the government takes a dollar from one person, and gives it to another, it only moves misery around, but when misery seems universal or inescapable, one can understand why governments might resort to such policies. During the Depression the person who was all set to earn money in the free market might have found his chances of doing so were better selling things to those who got government jobs, than to those who have no jobs, and few prospects of getting them.

[risk]

Maybe more later, but yes, an expiration date should have been stamped on much of the New Deal.

[Allan]

Roosevelt is a fresh face
Hitler is a a fresh face
Hitler is not a good guy
means
Roosevelt is not necessarily a good guy.

[eno_]

You are perhaps implying I am a dogmatist. But the facts are that, in the depth of the Depression, unemployment was about 25%.

That's brutal, and it calls for emergency feeding and housing programs, but it doesn't mean you have to have a coup against the Constitution and put the FedGov on a trajectory to consume fivefold more of the nation's output each year.

But that is what happened. Housing and feeding the poor was a small part of FDR's program, and the Republicans would have done that, too.

You need not buy into 95% of what FDR did in order to defend the imperative that Americans not starve.

[liberallarry]

Roosevelt is not necessarily a good guy.

Not necessarily a bad guy either.

Human psychology is the same the world over. In some situations - for example California governor - a fresh face is what's needed. Doesn't guarantee anything (from the frying pan into the fire) but if the status quo is intolerable trying something new is a plus.

See Risk's comment on his family's personal experience of the Depression. He describes what Roosevelt did and meant as well as anyone could.

[Allan]

But the New Deal programs employed and fed some people who would have otherwise starved.

Is there any record of anyone actually starving during the depression?

My parents also lived through the depression
there was no Roosevelt or New Deal in Canada
and the depression probably was worse here.

They lived for a while under the barter system
they taught school and the parents brought them food.

[liberallarry]

My parents lost everything in New York so they moved to California where things were much better.
I've met a number of people who's families had owned farms which were not repossessed or in danger of being repossessed. They didn't describe their Depression years as hard ones.
Gary Cooper and Clark Gable had a terrific time.

[liberallarry]

eno's #346 is a pretty good criticism of Roosevelt's programs. I don't know whether I agree with it - have to review exactly what Roosevelt did, why he did it, and whether he can or should be blamed for what followed - but it's good.

[liberallarry]

But the facts are that, in the depth of the Depression, unemployment was about 25%.

Today, the bottom 25% of the population pays 3-4% of the income tax collected by the Federal government which means that most of them have no earned income.

Apparently they're unemployable at all times in all places.

[x]

You are perhaps implying I am a dogmatist.

I wouldn't think of it, since I don't know you. But there are people on the Internet and in think tanks who don't realize how dire the situation was in 1933. I'd say they were dogmatists or emotionalists or uninformed.

I don't say everything FDR did was right, just that more was bound to be done by government in the 1930s than today's libertarians would think right, or justified, or permissible.

It looks like we don't disagree that much, if at all. People couldn't be allowed to starve. And creating jobs projects was a way of giving men some dignity and getting them out of the house, rather than just giving them a check or a meal.

But the situation didn't justify the breadth and depth of intervention in the economy the the National Recovery Administration practiced. "Risk" is right: an "expiration date" should have been put on many of the New Deal policies. It is pretty clear that those who wanted a more powerful government exploited the Depression in ways that were regrettable, and FDR himself was too seduced by the prospect of greater power and glory for himself.

But some people in economics departments and think tanks don't always take psychology enough into account. A policy that would be appropriate to bring about recovery from a light recession probably wouldn't have worked in the 1930s. If people aren't convinced that the usual rewards and incentives for effort apply, then policies based on those rewards and incentives won't work. That's not to say that everything FDR did was right or that his policies should become a permanent standard, just that we have to be careful with economic arguments, when the outlook of one age differs so much from another.

[risk]

>>>> Is there any record of anyone actually starving during the depression?

I asked my mother and father that question a few weeks ago.

My father and his three brothers were reduced to eating a few slices of bleached bread and margarine for several months. My uncle, who would later be starved in a Japanese prison camp for 44 months (and would eventually die this year of starvation when cancer closed up his throat) was skin and bones when they all moved to a home for children whose parents could not provide for them.

My mother says that people were suffering from malnutrition all around her in the 1930s dustbowl midwest.

Were there specific deaths by starvation? That I don't know. It would be interesting to get some numbers on this.

[Allan]

In some situations a fresh face is what's needed.

Why?
In Canada we got through the depression
with two old worn-out hack faces
R.B. Bennett and W.L. Mackenzie King.
Somehow we survived
and in the end
the economic situation in our two countries was about the same.

[eno_]

I don't know... do we disagree?

Would you be for, or against, going back to a FedGov with the budget (relative to GDP) and powers it had before the New Deal?

I don't think that is a "libertarian" position. At the time, it was a mainstream Republican position.

[eno_]

Today, the bottom 25% of the population pays 3-4% of the income tax collected by the Federal government which means that most of them have no earned income.

That's just wacky. The bottom 25% pay little or no tax because of low marginal rates and (relative to their incomes) high personal and dependent deductions.

[x]

That's not going to happen any time soon, if ever. It's doubtful that most Americans would ever be convinced. That's probably one reason why demands for a massive rollback may not be found in recent GOP platforms.

But the phrase "relative to GDP" says a lot. Does a massive increase in toxic chemicals or interstate air or highway travel justify a greater role of the federal government in those areas? If it does, that allows for greater growth in government than mere population growth would. If it doesn't, serious troubles might arise or resources may have to come from somewhere else to regulate growing industries.

If we can find a way to make do with less government, fine. If government really is the main problem in some areas, great. Get it out of those areas. But like most people, I'm sceptical of claims that we can have a wholesale rollback of the federal government's powers.

Two "Republican revolutions" didn't bring the long awaited rollback. For that reason, it's doubtful to me that it will ever happen.

[TopQuark]

Marx WAS a Jew, so how could he do what you say?

That is a "fact" from the Nazi propaganda that current anti-Semites keep alive. The Marx family was Jewish, indeed. Euther Karl's father or grandfather converted out of Judaism. As happens to many converts, Karl Marx became a vicious anti-Semite.

For Nazis, it was not a religion or conduct that mattered: the "Jewish blood" of Marx, no matter how anti-Semitic (he despised Russians, too, incidentially --- how ironic) he was, made him Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis.

[Tribune7]

Milt Friedman has said similar things about FDR policies.

[eno_]

If airlines and chemical manufacturing create our increased GDP, then a government that is in proportion to that GDP would be able to handle it.

Government, in absolute measures, would, of course be much larger than before the New Deal. But it should be cut back to pre-New Deal proportions.

There is nothing to fear from such large cutbacks. State governments are now larger than most national governments on the planet. There is no reason to think the states could not shoulder the responsibilty for everthing they SHOULD have under their jurisdiction.