FDR failed abysmally??? NeoCons trying to destroy FDR/Obama in the WaPo

[arcadian]

Shalaes is a former fellow at the right-wing American Interprise Institute where her goals were destroying FDR's legacy.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013002760.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

FDR Was a Great Leader, But His Economic Plan Isn't One to Follow

By Amity Shlaes
Sunday, February 1, 2009

One evening in the 1930s, a 13-year-old named William Troeller hanged himself from the transom of his bedroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

William's father was laid up in Kings County Hospital awaiting surgery for an injury he'd suffered on the job at Brooklyn Edison. A federal jobs program was paying William's older brother Harold for temporary work. But the amount wasn't nearly enough to make ends meet. Gas and electricity to the family's apartment had been shut off for half a year. Harold told a New York Times reporter that both hunger and modesty had driven William to act. "He was reluctant about asking for food," read the headline in the paper.

The surprising part of this story is not that it happened; most Americans know that after the 1929 stock-market crash, hard times sometimes led to suicide. The surprising part is that William Troeller killed himself not in 1930, when Herbert Hoover was president, but in 1937, in Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term. The New Deal was almost five years old, but the economy was not back. In fact, the country seemed farther from recovery than before. A new sense of futility was overcoming Americans. The British magazine the Economist sneered that the United States "seemed to have forgotten, for the moment, how to grow."

more@link

[tsuki]

1. That is the view from corporate America. It is true that the financial

markets had not recovered, but the workers were doing much better until the war.

[Traveling_Home]

3. How were the unemployment rates doing?

Were they better in '37 then in '33 or so?

[HillbillyBob]

13. in 37 was when the rpukes pushed thru cuts to the wpa programs

stalling the recovery.

[HillbillyBob]

14. in 37 was when the rpukes pushed thru cuts to the New Deal programs

stalling the recovery.

[Traveling_Home]

7. I found the unemployment rates ....

"According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data -- which did not count those in work-relief programs as employed -- the U.S. unemployment rate was 14.3 percent in 1937 and 19 percent in 1938, compared to 24.9 percent in 1933."

At least we aren't near those rates now!

[tsuki]

16. Are you sure that we are not close to those rates? If you only

count those collecting unemployment, how can you have an accurate unemployment rate?

[Baikonour]

2. You know why the New Deal started to fail in '37?

Because FDR began take his foot off the pedal and started listening to the republicans - he began to cut spending. It was eventually WWII that brought the economy back.

Krugman I think wrote an article on this once. I'll try to find it.

[Cronopio]

9. I have the Krugman link in Response #8.

[WCGreen]

10. He tried to pack the supreme court and lost support for trying to do

that...

[Geek_Girl]

4. I wonder how well this is going to Play with the GOP base in the South

Many Southerners, myself included are employed by Agencies created by the New Deal and we have the lowest power costs in the country.

FDR is pretty well revered down here even by the most right wing republican.

[arcadian]

5. True, even with right-wing sister-in-law

She is one of the most rabid FOXNews watching types out there, but she seems reluctant to bash FDR, I think it's that whole winning World War II thing. Even this article makes sure it doesn't step on FDR's toes too much.

[seemunkee]

6. I read that and dismissed it as corporate revisionism

They really are still trying to create their own reality. Sort of like Second Life or D&D for politicians, it doesn't match up to reality.

[Cronopio]

8. One anecdote doesn't prove a hypothesis.

In the mainstream media it can, but not in the real world.

The anecdote fails in the fact that, a few years into the New Deal, FDR reined in government spending because of pressure from economists and businessmen who said that the deficits he was racking up would stall the recovery. The business media are banking on the misconception that FDR was a steadfast champion of Keynesian economics when, in fact, he hedged his bets.

Krugman mentions this here: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/new-deal-economics/

[Shipwack]

12. Just wanted to mention that I love your former handle...

Not everyone has the courage to walk from there...

[Cronopio]

15. I love it when people spot the allusion.

The more people who make the decision, the easier the decision becomes.

Feel free to adopt the handle if the forum rules allow it. (that's part of the reason why I'm moving on to another handle)

:hi:

[Stargleamer]

17. Exactly, Shlaes deceives by using it--suicide rate went down

From 1910 to 1933, the suicide rate in the U.S. gradually rose. However after '33 things began to lessen.

In the Historical Statistics of the U.S. the number of suicide deaths per 100,000 population was 15.9 for 1933 and 15.0 for 1937. Adjusting for population, this represents roughly 675 less people killing themselves. As Krugman has stated, FDR began to restrain the New Deal in '37, resulting in a worsening of the Depression. Shlaes conveniently describes a suicide from that year 1937, but the New Deal kept on going after that and unemployment did go down further.

Also, there is a widely known association between high unemployment and suicide, and as someone else here has pointed out, unemployment went substantially down from 1933 to 1937.

[Still Sensible]

11. Just a replay of the anti-FDR bullshit the GOP was trotting

out 40 and 50 years ago. They spent so many decades in the wilderness after FDR and spent most of that time trying unsuccessfully to convince people that his policies ruined America.

Of course their number one target through all those years was Social Security, followed closely by attacks on the "welfare state." When Medicare was passed in the 60s they damn near went into apoplexy telling people it would bankrupt the country. Of course Social Security and Medicare have already become sacred cows politically for all intents and purposes. So what does Bush do--he completely throws out GOP orthodoxy and rams through a Medicare prescription drug plan in '04 that, arguably, secured his reelection in a close vote.

The republicans enjoyed a comeback for their misguided ideology starting with Reagan... and in the last 28 years, as more and more of their ideology has become law, they have clearly shown why they spent so many years in the wilderness.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. FDR apparently failed so bad

That the people only elected him to FOUR terms! :wtf:

One progressive podcaster, Jack Clark (Blast The Right), even argued that FDR's "New Deal" didn't end up being quite as ambitious as he would've liked but it was probably as good as he could get back then. Given its apparently "limited" nature we ended up doing quite well.