Now I don't want to bash too much on our 32nd President. He did lead us through World War II, partly by projecting a constant image of strength and determination, and I've got a lot of respect for him for that. And it must be said that he didn't intend to create the massive welfare state we know and loathe today--Social Security, for instance, was never meant to become so extensive. Yet, if we take a good hard look at the data, one cannot conclude that his domestic leadership did anything to save the nation, or even to keep things from getting worse.
There's more to the failure of the New Deal, it should be noted, than simply that the Depression continued to go on well after 1933. Even your average liberal professor will admit that. What they won't do is discuss the reasons for it.
For one thing, FDR's policies failed to strengthen the economy in one of the most elemental ways: they did not provide the stability and consistency necessary for a market to operate. I doubt I'm surprising anyone here with this, but investment, production, and the exchange of goods tend to work best when the rules are constant and known to all. The New Deal not only did not bring or maintain such stability, it went in the opposite direction. As just one example of how this happened, consider the incoming president's approach to the monetary system. One of the first things Roosevelt did in 1933 was to issue an executive order (an illegal executive order, but I digress) confiscating all privately held gold in the country. Once this had been accomplished, the government set the price of gold for sale on the world market, and then continuously raised the price to increase revenue.
This was bad enough, of course, but what made it much worse was the fact that these increases occurred without reason or rhyme, as gold prices were set according to what the POTUS, by common consent an intellectual lightweight, thought they should be. One nearly unbelievable example of how this could work came when FDR informed his Treasury Secretary that he had decided to raise the price by 21 cents--because 7 is a lucky number and 7 times 3 is 21. Not only did this open the door to rapid inflation, it played havoc with banking and the rest of the finance sector. As one writer noted,
One effect [of this rise in gold prices] was that private borrowing and lending, except from day to day, practically ceased. With the value of the dollar being posted daily at the Treasury like a lottery number, who would lend money for six months or a year, with no way of even guessing what a dollar would be worth when it came back paid?No wonder that the stock market did not fully recover until the 1950s, that the GDP did not reach 1929 levels until the early 1940s, or that unemployment remained in double digits until World War II.
Not that a more academically accomplished President might have done any better. The supposed wonder boys of FDR's administration, the so-called "Brain Trust," were just as capable of making a bad situation terrible. For example, you may remember from history class the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which mainly distinguished itself by paying farmers to destroy their crops and livestock in the midst of starvation. The theory behind this waste was that by limiting the supply of produce, demand and therefore price would be driven up. This interference accomplished less than nothing, at least from the standpoint of the farmers themselves. A review of farm prices in 1939--after six years of market interference by the nation's "best and brightest"--revealed that prices for nearly all agricultural products, whether corn, cotton, wheat, or pork, were still only one-half to two-thirds of what they had been a decade before. The AAA failed to help farmers, and it made the misery of non-farmers worse, as the destruction of crops had such an effect that, by 1935, economists were predicting the U.S. would have to become a net importer of wheat for the first time ever.
But hey, at least the government did something for the little guy, right? Didn't those wonderful liberal civil servants make sure the poor were protected from the rich? Well, not exactly. What no one likes to admit about New Deal regulation is that it was created by and for the wealthy. The NRA (not that NRA--the National Recovery Administration), the key business regulatory agency created by the New Deal, came up with its codes the best way the Brain Trust knew how: the leaders of the largest businesses were brought in to write and/or review them. In other words, Big Business wrote the regulations that only businesses with sufficient money could easily comply with. Anyone see where this is going?
The resulting situation was one not unlike the medieval guild system, one where a tailor could be sent to jail for pressing a suit of clothes for five cents less than the NRA codes allowed (no, seriously, that happened). Small businesses across the country went under, which was just as the corporations friendly to the government had planned. And to save space, I'll avoid going into detail about how unions and businesses alike played the regs to exclude minority employment where they could, as did many Southern farmers to drive off black tenants.
Oh dear, this has gotten too long. So why am I bringing all this up? Because, as we are all painfully aware, the New Deal is in many ways the foundational myth for the modern Left. It is proof for liberals that government intervention in the economy works, that an active government saved the country just when laissez-faire conservatism was about to take it down. And thanks to leftists in the media and academia, this belief has been repeated endlessly, so that whenever small-government advocates try to push back against the welfare state, they are forced to "explain" the success of the New Deal. Well, consider it explained. It wasn't a success.
55 comments:
T-Rav, This is Tinkerbellism: if enough people truly believe something is true, then it becomes true. Welcome to the world of the left.
Andrew, hence my "the emperor has no clothes" debunking. We all "know" that Democratic policies didn't end the Depression, but we need to know exactly why, and also how they failed to live up to what they claimed their ideals were. The Dems' trump card is that they have people convinced it's the government that solves problems.
Part x of how gov't schooling has shaped the minds of the "low information" voters everyone mentions these days.
We (the conservative/traditionalist/realist) bloc have lost the culture, education, political and financial battles and the war for our country ended a long time ago. All this sniping around the edges only serves to re-enforce the leftists views. "We've always been at war with Eurasia."
Look at any scholastic history book and see how FDR is portrayed. I went to elementary school in the 50's and 60's and he was a demi-god even back then, a short 10-20 years after his rule.
So, we won't win the history battles until we reclaim the schoolhouse. And that ain't gonna happen in my lifetime...short a cultural revolution that I don't see happening. Anything short will be laughed away as "revisionist right wing" spin by the victors.
We now have a socialist in all but name in the WH and controlling our major institutions. Perhaps this is the way we've devolved and must be content with the scraps from the leftists table in order to survive.
Happy New Year huh?!
Patriot, I imagine at least some of that demigod status came from simply having been in office so long and, like I said, his leadership during World War II. Either way, even conservative Democrats I know are enamored of FDR, and when I was a teenager and doing a political quiz, I marked him down as having been a better president than Reagan. Don't worry, I was still somewhat uneducated at the time. :-)
Unfortunately, this post won't change the dominant liberal view of FDR, as you point out. But maybe it'll give a few readers the hard facts they need to refute that view when they encounter it. Even leftist professors have generally been forced to admit the New Deal wasn't very successful in ending the Depression; the facts in hindsight are too glaring for even them to ignore. So maybe there's a little hope?
T-Rav, I think the problem is that once something becomes myth, facts can't really undo it. I can site dozens of examples, left, right an non-political where people simply believe something is true because there is this myth around it and myths are immune to facts. This is why it's so utterly insane for conservatives to abandon academia, Hollywood and the press... as they have.
Patriot - I went to public school in the '60's and '70's and distinctly remember when we study Roosevelt/New Deal arguing that our recovery from the Depression was because of the War effort, not because of any pre-War NRA programs. Our entry into WWII, put every able bodied man available into the military thereby taking them off the bread lines and giving them a paycheck (however small). And every industry in country including the film industry, was utilized and tooled for the War Effort.
People "at home" continued to sacrifice with rationing of everything. They were used to it anyway. Women went to work in the factories in huge numbers and everyone - young, old, and inbetween - was involved in some way.
When the war ended, we sadly had over 500K less men to employ. The women who worked in the wartime factories were sent back home** and the men had jobs waiting for them. Industry turned it's effort back to private or semi-private endeavors.
I guess one can make the argument that "the Goverment" paid for it all, but more importantly pretty much every man woman and child contributed more in sweat equity than in taxes.
**BTW, Forcing women back into the kitchen after they ran the factories during the war was the final straw that caused the rise of radical feminism in late '50's and '60's.
Bev, We actually weren't taught either that FDR ended the Great Depression, we were told it was WWII, though I don't think any of our teachers went into the mechanics of it. Basically, we learned about the market crash, the dust bowl, FDR's court packing and the NRA, and then WWII.
There are establishment Republicans fond of FDR (I imagine Jonah Goldberg and Conrad Black must have some heated arguments over wine) and Reagan was a big fan.
The argument I've heard is that FDR's Great Society policies ameriolated poverty, and while it strikes me as incredibly unlikely given the nature of his policies (mountains of butter are hilarious stupidity when the Euros do it) and the length and depth of the Great Depression, FDR winning reelection three times means that he must have been convincing (which is an entirely different thing than being right) even at the time.
I'm sure most conservatives can be brought around (FDR letting big business write legislation would be viewed as positive in some circles regardless of the impact) but I think changing mainsteam/liberal opinion of him is going to be tough.
Andrew, that is really what we were taught too. I mean, it was Texas. They didn't like Roosevelt. We had a heavy WWII-centric curriculum in American History/World History as I remember. We were in the middle of Vietnam, but there wasn't much talk about it. Which, looking back, there should have been. I can only surmise that kids today know more about the Vietnam War than I will every know simple because I was in school during the war. But then I imagine that there wasn't much talk in school during WWII either.
Bev, I learned this in three states because we moved around at the time. I also got in college in New York of all places. While I do think it's foolish of conservatives to leave education to the left, I actually don't think there can be any legitimate blame put on the schools for making kids into leftists. I know that's a very popular belief among conservatives right now for why they've lost the public, but it's a delusion.
Andrew, to quote....someone, We don't even know what we don't know. Never a good situation to be in.
Anthony, part of the reason for that is that Roosevelt is much harder to pin down ideologically than the people around him. Don't forget, in '32 he ran on a platform of balanced budgets and correcting the futile spending programs of Hoover (!), and there were some conservatives in his administration throughout. So many conservatives don't think he was a terrible president (Black, for example). The same cannot be said, though, for many of the people around him; many of them, such as Henry Wallace, wanted a full command economy.
I'm sure general opinion on FDR will be hard to change. I threw the big business bit in mainly to point out to any liberals who might read it that the things they claim to believe in were directly contradicted by their hero. It won't make them free-marketers, but it might make them think twice about always invoking his memory.
Hi T-Rav! Did you miss me? Good article, and glad to be able to catch up for just a day on a person I really dislike.
I blocked out what most of what I did learn in school about FDR (you DON'T want to know my acronym for it--Tryanmax learned the hard way). I vaguely remember something about him, and WWII ending the depression, or whatever. I have no love for FDR.
I read the book New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton W. Folsom Jr. I don't know if it was really biased or not, but it was VERY insightful, and caused me to like FDR even less.
Anyhoo, I've been pretty busy, this past week especially. Take a look if you'd like.
Hey, Jen, are you buying or selling?? Either is just udderly ridiculous! Tee-hee...Milk cow humor. I bet you've never heard that one before, have you? ;-)
Bev
I went to High School in the late 70's early 80's and honestly I don't remember being taught anything about the New Deal. Oh it was in the book I am sure but thinking on it we did very little actual history.
I remember that in class we read plays like Inherit the Wind to learn about the scopes Monkey Trials. The school had a new AV camera studio and the teacher wanted to use it so we could get extra credit if we did "plays" that were televised. I signed up for them all since I was in the AV club anyways. So instead of lectures we went to the camera studio.
For Watergate I was both Nixon and Deep Throat. The only lectures about American History I remembered were on Lincoln.
So I guess from that standpoint the poor quality history teaching staff at my public school failed to indoctrinate me to the godlike qualities of FDR.
Oddly enough in college the hardest humanities elective for me was history. Go Figure! Oh well ..........
T-Rav
We should point out that FDR is also the individual to send the upper marginal tax rate to 90%. He is responsible for coining the mythology regarding losing money to save on taxes.
How this adds to your point is that by doing this FDR trained business to find loophles in order to survive. Any business that could not afford a fleet of tax lawyers and accountants to take advantange of creative tax schemes would be marginalized and probably put out of business.
I got no 20th c. history in school, with the exception of one year when our project was to interview a WWII veteran. That was rather an exercise in stupidity, since what I learned is that vets mainly want to recall the times they did something stupid with their buddies and got away with it.
What I know about 20th c. history all came from my lit classes, where we read Jack London, Sinclair, Prufrock, Gatsby, Steinbeck, Williams, Orwell, Anne Frank, Arthur Miller, Lord of the Flies, Bradbury, Tolkein. That's my 20th c. history. To this day, I haven't read a word of Hemingway.
As to FDR, the New Deal, and the end of the Great Depression, what I've come to understand is that WWII is held up as what ended it b/c it allows preservation of the Keynesian theory that gov't can spend an economy out of recession (see Paul Krugman's space-alien theory) while tacitly acknowledging that the New Deal was a failure.
The problem with pointing to WWII as ending the Great Depression is that it's That's the broken window fallacy on a grand and global scale! It also calls into question the value of peace. (HERE is an interesting and accessible paper on more reasons why the war years cannot be properly understood as a recovery period. Download is free.)
If WWII did do anything to help end the Great Depression in the U.S., it did so by forcing FDR to halt many of his New Deal programs. Following the war, Truman attempted to revive the New Deal, but at that time, enough Americans recognized it as a failure and elected officials ushered in an era of tax-cuts and reduced regulation.
However, that still overlooks the fact that the US economy was recovering before the War broke out and was nearly back on trend prior to Pearl Harbor. An emerging economic theory posits that, as unexciting as it sounds, economies simply grow and recover. This theory points to the differences between the 1929-33 and 1937-38 troughs and their related recoveries, mainly the monetary expansion enacted following the former that was not enacted following the latter.
What sucks about that theory--regardless whether it's accurate--is that it basically states "the sun will come up tomorrow." People are much easier to rile up than to calm down, and this theory doesn't deliver much in the "riling up" category.
That isn't to say that economies can't possibly be destroyed. Rather, it only indicates that politicians who insist on a policy response to economic event are at best applying band-aids to broken limbs. The limb will attempt to heal, for which the politicians will claim credit. But if it sets wrong, they will blame the want of a bigger band-aid. And when those band-aids consist of dumping milk in the streets while others starve, well...
Welcome back, Jen! Sadly, I have neither $850 in ready cash nor any need for a dairy cow.
Here in Missouri, because of its traditional Blue Dog culture, FDR is still remembered fondly by people like my grandparents, and even I thought he was a good president growing up. I did hear about one guy in a Tennessee college who horrified his liberal professor by making some polio-related crack, though, so it's not a universal sentiment.
I haven't read Folsom's book, but I've heard it's pretty good. If some of the info on Roosevelt was general knowledge, his image would be considerably more tarnished. I wonder, for example, how some of the feminists who lionize Eleanor would feel about the couple's....er...."marital complications."
Andrew and Bev, American history is way in my rear-view mirror, but I remember that, while we weren't told that the New Deal pulled America out of the Depression, it was strongly implied that it and Roosevelt prevented the country from collapsing altogether and also gave Americans hope for the future.
The first proposition is highly debatable, at best, since it relies on all kinds of counterfactual thinking; I suppose there is some support for the second, since, as Anthony pointed out, he was re-elected, repeatedly, by massive margins. But those are intangibles. What concern us here are the tangibles, the measurements of how liberalism affected the Depression.
Then again, our high school textbook was already veering into the identity-politics game at the expense of the narrative and actual facts, and many of the university counterparts were and are even worse. One of the latter, for example, capitalizes the names of ethnicities, so that you have "White settlers" and "White soldiers," etc. As you can imagine, it's a totally objective review of American history.
Of course, FDR won the Depression and ended the War. Or won the War and ended the Depression? It's in the history books, and they are always right! :)
Right after Goldberg's book came out, I was discussing the idea of FDR's less than perfection with one of my aunts or uncles. I thought my grandparents were going to disown me (and I'm the fave!) for saying a negative word about FDR. It was worse than when I said something negative about Cronkite! It was a little bit funny. Later.
Tryanmax - Actually I think the "sun will come up tomorrow" school of economics is fairly accurate. But "the Government" must look like it is doing something to earn their keep too. WHich is exactly what they SHOULDN'T be doing. The state ecomonies where the legislatures do the least, have usually been the strongest. THat doesn't mean that they should do nothing. Slight directed tweeking, kind of like the little bursts of the space shuttle boosters, do much more than full bore legislation. The stock market and private sector industries will stabilize on their own.
Bush's slight tweeks and small tax cuts/rebates did alot to stabilize the ecomony after the little publicized Clinton fueled tech bubble crash in October 2000.
Andrew, I have a rather complex answer to whether or not it's the universities' fault.
In the first place, I think that higher ed institutions, in most (but not all) cases, have a tendency to skew liberal. There are multiple reasons for this, but the simplest one is that they tend to act as closed-off communities, and the faculty within them develop into a caste of sorts. If you spend much time around college professors, whether in the sciences or the liberal arts, you'll see that they have a completely separate lifestyle and tend not to associate much with non-academics. This is a problem, because it lets them get lost in their own heads and believe that ideas can simply be legislated into existence, without regard for the political and social realities. In such an environment, political viewpoints which place ideology over reality and are primarily emotion-based tend to win out, i.e. liberal ones. I've seen this attitude a hundred times.
That said, their influence can only extend so far. Where conservatives have really failed the youth, I think, isn't just their general absence from academia, it's their willingness to leave education in general to the schools, rather than taking responsibility as parents. A lot of the stories I've heard from people who drifted into liberalism in college and then found their way back in later years are the same: they followed conservative habits prior to college, but only because that "seemed like the thing to do." In college, they were overwhelmed by the new lifestyles presented as alternatives and overawed by the seemingly superior intellect of their professors. Many concluded that everything they'd known was wrong, and few of them reported having significant instruction from their parents at home.
On the other hand, a friend of mine in graduate school was partially homeschooled by her parents and went to a Christian academy before that, so she not only learned conservative values but also why they were superior, and is as much a right-winger today as ever. All of which is to say, if we want to roll back liberals' control over the youth, we have to meet them on all fronts.
nice article, Rav-- and very timely. For those that would explore the topic in greater depth, I can think of no title I would recommend more than Amity Shlaes' "The Forgotten Man." Some of his experiments temporarily helped, but the reverence with which so many liberals, opinion shapers, and teachers hold F.D.R. is incredibly over-value.
Another title worthwhile is "New Deal or Raw Deal?" by Burton Folsom, Jr.
I'm not certain we can put our finger on why people who are politically conservative have abandoned the teaching profession, but imagine it is not a specifically conscious decision. There is an old saw about "those that can do, while those who can't teach." I honestly never put a lot of stock in that. When I was growing up, there was a general feeling that teachers were not highly compensated which tended to cause boys who were ambitious to gravitate towards business. I agree though that the profession seems to be a closed system where people will be primarily exposed to liberalism from most peers. As another old saying goes: "if you work on a tun boat long enough, sooner or later you begin to smell like tuna."
sticky keys strike again: in first post it should be "over-valued" in 2nd post, it should be a "tuna" boat. ;)
tryanmax, I've read most of those guys (or portions of them), but no Hemingway. I get the impression he was rather full of himself, though.
The argument you present about a wartime economy is interesting. I think it's worth pointing out, though, that liberals didn't see war as a bad thing. Their first big moment in the sun came with Wilson and the creation of a war economy in 1917-19, and there was a lot of talk about "the moral equivalent of war" because it created a sense of national crisis, cut through the red tape, etc. That was why FDR asked off the bat for powers as great as if there was a military emergency.
I think there's a lot to be said for that emerging theory. People will buy and sell, come what may, even if our governments make it extremely inconvenient to do so freely.
Andrew, yes and no.
There's no proportional relationship between education and ideology, one way or another. Both the highly educated and highly uneducated do tend to skew Democratic, though, while those with a significant but marginally limited education--say, those who got four years of college and no more, or went to a community college, or just did well in high school and then entered the workforce--are more Republican. It's similar to what you see in income levels, actually. And as I alluded to, it matters less for our purposes what kind of education you get than what you do with it.
Incidentally, I intended this article as a discussion of the Left and its myths, not as yet another forum to bash fellow conservatives. So, could you not?
rla, I think you had it right the second time. Not sure, though. :-)
I can go you one better. The former Virginia senator and Navy Secretary James Webb, who went from Democrat to Republican to Democrat again, wrote some time ago that when he made his first flip in the '70s and started working for GOPers, a favorite aunt of his would no longer allow him in the house, yelling from the porch, "Did you know our President and Jesus Christ have the same initials? Every time I watch Carter on TV, I think of the blood of Jesus dripping down his back!" Yikes.
T-Rav, I sent you an e-mail.
T-Rav, of course libs don't think war is a bad thing b/c they a) don't understand the broken window fallacy and b) think a little war here and there is necessary to tidy up the gene pool.
Ken Burns did an interesting documentary on the lead up to the Great Depression called The Dust Bowl.
Jed, and it is a rather underpaid profession, though I see no way of changing that. A lot of it also depends on one's interests and aptitude.
Thanks for the compliment. I wish books like Folsom's had a wider audience, but either way, liberals will never let go of their contention that government action solves everything. Maybe with enough effort, though, we can reach the moderates/independents.
re Webb's aunt - YIKES!!!!
well-done article, BTW. Thanks!!
Tyranmax
I think one factor that we shold consider which wouild have been prompted by the war directly is Invention.
Prior to WW2 we still had biplanes (among some transport planes only). After WW2 we had significant advances in research during the war that led to rockets and jet engines. Necessity being the mother of invention and War being the Father of Necessity.
I don't think that it is a matter of the Sun coming out tomorrow. I think that rather the ultimate effect of scientific progress and invention creates a stronger economy with each and every invention. So while an FDR can make a lot of damaging mistakes so long as people are building the better mousetrap things will improve.
The point is though that economic prosperity would be potentially even greater without the unnecessary regulation. It can even be argued that the technological advancements allow for the negative effects of regulation. Unions and the associated minimum wage and OSHA requiremnets for instance could not be implemented if the assembly line did not exist.
Just my thoughts
Indie, absolutely technological advancements mute the negative effects of many other counter-forces, and the same applies to warfare. Again, just looking at it from the broken-window aspect, when you consider the high capital costs of warfare, including but certainly not downplaying human capital, it's hard to calculate but the technological advances may at best be a net wash. Another way to look at it, who is to say that the same about of capital spent over a longer period of time without war would not result in the same technological advancement? As is said in many industries, you can do anything faster, better, or cheaper, but not all three at once.
tryanmax, liberals don't understand a lot of fallacies.
Bev, I saw part of that a couple years ago. Like you said, it was interesting, not to mention very vivid. From what I know of Oklahomans today, though, a lot of them view the Dust Bowl "Okies" as wusses because they ran off instead of sticking it out. Not my part of the country, though.
Thanks, rla! Older members of my family didn't appreciate my Republican politics initially, either, if that helps.
As to the "sun will come out tomorrow," that just my vernacular way of describing the theory. A more prosaic way of stating the idea is that the economy contains an endogenous force which always pushes it toward its trend value, that trend being continually upward barring outside forces greater than the inherent growth force within the economy. Thus, natural, regulatory, political, and all manner of forces can be applied against an economy and it will continue to grow so long as they are not greater than the growth force of the economy itself.
As you can see, that's actually quite a bit different than simply saying "bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun," but I find Martin Charnin's words a tad more accessible.
tryanmax, That's actually become the driving economic theory of modern liberalism: the economy is on autopilot and nothing we do to it can really stop it, so feel free to tax it and regulate it to get what you want from it... it will recover and keep on chugging.
Andrew, true, and I've been paying attention to it spreading. However the fallacy of that thinking, as I just pointed out, is that there is a tipping point.
I remember my grandparents, who lived through FDR era, as being as anti-FDR as many libs are anti-Bush and repubs are anti-Obama. So I don't think there is anything unusually unique about the feelings towards him based on which political party you are inclined to support.
What I don't like about him, is the same thing I don't like about Obama...that they use extra-constitutional powers that the Executive possesses and pushes them in many cases beyond what the constitution clearly specifies, in order to test the limits of what the opposition party is willing to put up with. To wit: FDR and his attempt to increase the Supreme Court by adding 3 more members; Obama ignoring established law and using executive orders to accomplish his leftist goals (DREAM Act).
It's almost as if they are daring the country, through the oppo party's elected reps, to "go ahead and try and stop me. I dare ya." Too much of this and the danger of riling up the "masses" to march on the institution with pitchforks and torches increases significantly.
Bottom line T-Rav, good article to bring forward for discussion as few today know the facts about that time and the impact we are still feeling as a result of FDR's expansion and intrusions.
Tyranmax
that is ture there will be innovation even in Peace time and this will improve out lot and give a rising economic boost. The difference in warfare is that more money will be spent in Research and Devlepment and those R&D prjects will be streamlined. There will also be many more trial and error efforts made. There is a book listing the failed inventions of the WW2 error that is humourous.
I think that there is a giant leap forward in technology which after the war gets placed into the civilian sector so it appears the economy improved because of the war but in reality it was the invention.
In a sense you could argue that the best thing for an economy is a cold war. The Cold War with the Soviets led to both sides spending a great deal of capital to keep the other side from getting an advancement over them but there was no requisite destruction with a hot war.
I do find it ironic though that liberals today want to "progress" back to the technology of the 1700's with windmills and want to abandon newer technologies such as Fusion and Space. I think that historians in 20 years will note that the Obama era saw a market decline in technology as well as economically.
Indie, I do fully understand what you are getting at, but there is simply no way around the "broken window" aspect of warfare. In that case, you are reveling in the speed of advancement while discounting the additional cost to achieve that speed. You're also ignoring that wartime advancements are predominantly improvements to existing technologies. Novel technologies more often arise in peace time.
Your cold war comparison roughly echoes Paul Krugman's space invaders argument, and there is some sense to it, though I can't describe tooling up for a war never to be fought as the best thing for an economy. What you are essentially arguing is that the best thing for an economy is for someone to generate artificial need. While this is indeed better than generating real need through destruction, generating artificial need is the most common complaint against consumer industries. A compelling argument could also be made that this is what regulation does when new goods and services are required to achieve compliance.
The best thing for an economy is for there to be no destruction beyond depreciation or what is natural and for only real needs to be met with new solutions at the same pace as they arise. But this is not likely.
Indi and tryanmax, I can't say with authority what the relationship between war and the economy is. I can only say that we should avoid thinking of this as a zero-sum game. Given new technology and the recruitment of ever more manpower, it's possible to create lots of guns and lots of butter at the same time. However, there is also such a thing as diminishing returns, and devoting the bulk of one's capital to a single sector is not usually a good thing, in war or peace.
Sorry to talk in generalities, but I've had a hectic day and couldn't jump in earlier. I would agree with tryanmax, though, that peace is better for the economy in the long run than war.
Patriot, there were a lot of people who bitterly opposed FDR during his presidency--and despite what you might be told today, not all of them were rich. What I'm saying about him, though, is that regardless of party or ideology, Americans have developed a belief that it's the government's job to take action in a crisis, any crisis. Even in a hurricane, which a century ago was never seen as the business of the government, the cry goes up, "Why doesn't Washington do something?" FDR and his administration don't bear all of the blame for that, but they do bear a lot of it.
Thanks for the compliments. I hope information like this spreads around and makes people aware of what generally happens when government does act.
Bev, Selling.
T-Rav, I often refer to Folsom's book because it made such an impression on me. I don't read many books, and of the half dozen or so I've read in the past few years, they were mostly of a political nature. If you get a chance to read it, do so. From what I remember (it wasn't my copy--I borrowed it from my dad), there was other info in it that I found useful--think LBJ.
Jen, I'll have to take a look at Folsom the next time I see it in bookstores. You should really read more books, by the way. They're good stuff.
belated response to T-Rav: what's funny is my grandfather had considered himself GOP for decades at this point. But he was of an age and perspective that FDR was great... My grandmother was a yellow-dog Democrat for years. Magically about 15 years ago she became GOP - started telling the rest of us we should read Cal Thomas or Ann Coulter, etc. It was a quiet family joke for years, this revisionist history of her "long-time" conservatism... I miss her.
I was very lucky in college (as I've said before) that my lib profs were open to us having differing perspectives...
rla, you and me both. And my grandparents have been like that too, mainly since Obama was elected. It's hilarious to hear my dear grandpa say that he's "always been open to voting for Republicans" when ten years ago you couldn't pay him to quit talking about how awful Bush, Eisenhower, Reagan, and everyone else in the GOP was. I guess you have to justify your political swings somehow.
T-Rav, I just don't have much time to read anymore, and it typically is non-fiction if I do. If I have to fill my brain with junk, it might as well be something useful. It was all I could do to read the last two books I finished.
Thanks for the welcome back, however, I don't know how long I'll stick around--just don't have the right cards to bring to the table. I'm not college educated, and not as intellectually read as the rest of you are around here, so I don't feel like I fit in. Things got a little sour (you know who you are), and no matter how hard I tried to make amends, it just fell on deaf ears.
This past year has been a big roller-coaster ride--emotionally, and then challenging in my line of work. So, if I've ever said anything to offend, please don't take it personally. I'm going to state this publicly--please forgive me, and accept my apologies if I've said something I shouldn't have.
Thanks for the good times.
Also T-Rav, things have gotten real interesting these last few days. Don't ask for details--not gonna say anything except for this--it's like giving a kid the key to a candy store. If your curiosity gets the best of you, put on your thinking cap, and follow the bread crumbs...
Jen, I think we're all happy to have you here. And I don't think we're intellectually superior by any means. There's a lot of stuff talked about here that's new to me. Jump in and stay involved whenever you can.
Don't worry about it, Jen. I'm also not that "intellectually read", either. I went to school in both the Oakland and LA public school districts. Yeah, it was a mess to put it mildly. I almost didn't meet the requirements to graduate! I barely had any knowledge of politics prior to 2007! All I knew was Democrats = Good, Republican = Evil! I also didn't start reading regularly until I was in my early 20s! Thank God for e-books!
T-Rav, and Mr. Snape, Thanks.
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