| Book Review
Been There, Done That!
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1932, the American economy was already in a depression, banks were failing, people couldn't find jobs, people were hungry. FDR believed that depressions were caused by unchecked, "greedy," big corporations, unregulated free markets, and individuals accumulating what he considered as 'too much wealth'. He promised America that he would wage war on big business, and during his presidency, assumed unprecedented powers to prosecute that war. Historian Jim Powell, author of "FDR's Follies," relates the history and development of the massive New Deal programs, brief political biographies of the men who administered them, and especially the effects of the often contradictory New Deal measures on the lives of Americans. He draws extensively on recent decades of studies by economists and historians who had noted that most histories on FDR focused on the political consequences of his New Deal, not the economic consequences.
"Political support from farmers was a major reason FDR won the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination...He promised farmers that he would somehow increase their income." What the farmers wanted was "compulsion, some way of limiting what everybody produced, to force prices above market levels." The Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed by Congress in 1933, and FDR presented it to the public "as an emergency measure, but he envisioned permanent government control of agriculture." Farmers were paid "$100 million to plow under some 10 million acres of farmland...Hog farmers were paid to slaughter some 6 million baby pigs." This, at a time when millions of Americans were going hungry. Paradoxically, "The Department of Agriculture issued a bulletin telling the nation that the great problem of our time was our failure to produce enough food to provide people with a mere subsistence diet..."
But even landowners in the South, which voted solidly Democratic at every election, to a man, did not receive subsidies as lucrative as those awarded to farmers in the Western 'swing' states, where Roosevelt needed to increase his popularity. By the same token, Conservation Corps jobs and Public Work construction went primarily to the Western states as well. The pattern of lobbying by farmers, manufacturers, bankers and businessmen who asked for protective programs that would limit competition and force up prices, continued and fit well into FDR's plans. The government promoted cartels of businessmen who helped draft the necessary legislation. The subsidy funds were distributed through local Democratic party leadership, and those politicians fought fiercely among themselves for the privilege of dispensing this largesse. The funds were often blatantly used to buy votes through the awarding of jobs and contracts.
The public never demanded the New Deal laws that forced them to pay higher prices for fewer goods and services; they did not ask for minimum wages that made them too expensive to hire. They did not ask Roosevelt's Justice department to attack with civil and criminal lawsuits the biggest employers in the nation, further reducing their opportunities for work. They did not want their neighborhood dry cleaner fined and the owner imprisoned because he dared to offer to press a suit for a few cents less than a New Deal law required. Women entering the workplace found themselves unemployable because businessmen were required to pay women much higher wages than men, "for their own protection," but really to protect men's jobs. While America despaired, FDR arrogantly and ignorantly undermined every effort Americans made to recover from the depression. The effect of the New Deal programs accomplished exactly what Roosevelt intended -- altering the way America did business. He was well on the way to creating a command economy, similar to the fascist economy in Italy which he and his administration stated often that they admired. He goal was never higher employment rates, or cheaper goods and services. Those were accomplished only when Roosevelt was sidetracked by a different kind of war, -- World War II.
Powell says, "Interestingly, it was a Democrat...who achieved the first big tax cuts from FDR's World War II highs. In the 1960 election campaign, John F. Kennedy talked about tax cuts as a strategy for stimulating the economy; and he won the election, in part, because the Eisenhower-Nixon administration was blamed for the recession the country was experiencing. Kennedy declared,"The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system...I am not talking about a 'quickie' or temporary tax cut...our present tax system...exerts too heavy a drag on growth ...siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power..." Carter and Clinton raised taxes again, and Reagan and Bush again lowered them. Democrats seem to have learned nothing from FDR except to admire the power and control over the nation he cleverly assumed, to our lasting detriment, and his skill in deceiving the public. Even now, they would hang onto the failing Social Security program, they promise to increase taxes, and they would again regulate businesses until they shrink, taking jobs away from us. No thanks. We've been there and done that. Peggy Whitcomb
© 2003 Peggy Whitcomb |
