FDR was the first triangulator, the first significant politician to embrace the policies of the other party and to claim them as his own. Such strategies split the opposition and help the incumbent, and while the incumbent’s rank-and-file don’t like it, they usually go along. The only thing new about New Deal policies was their name and the people administering them. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3630/the-new-deal-in-one-lesson/
The New Deal in One Lesson
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Yes, it “is not terribly reassuring” but not at all surprising “that many of today’s conservatives extol FDR’s memory while comparing him to the current president.” The vast majority of conservatives as well as liberals are thorough-going statists. What differentiates them is not basic ideology, but the details of some of their programs and schemes. It can be argued that the conservative movement has not been a consistent, principled supporter of economic and civil liberties since the collapse of the Old Right in the 1950s. And what is in modern terminology called “liberalism” arguably took the same statist turn in the late 1800s with the rise to power of the so-called Progressive movement, and its very significant victory with the election of Woodrow Wilson, and the several major and extremely detrimental changes that were instituted in the federal government in 1913. And of course, there is the crowning gem of the of the Progressive and early 20th century internationalist mentality, the disaster of America’s entry into World War I.
I judge that the author and Jackson, like FDR and me, are white. Black Alabamans should have been against FDR for even more reasons than White Alabamans, as every price floor enacted by FDR (especially those affecting agricultural products) worked against “expendable” suppliers like sharecroppers and in favor of “connected” suppliers like (voting) whites.
But black Alabamans didn’t have the vote, so FDR wasn’t interested in them. Today, he would be, and his successors are. But there aren’t as many black Alabamans as there might have been had they had the vote, or even had there been no FDR/Hoover. Because when sharecroppers and other marginal laborers lost their markets to higher prices, they left their land and migrated to large cities, most of these in the north.
And so it goes . . .
Mr. Westley,
I have only a single item of disagreement with your article; You claim ‘conservatives’ admire the New Deal and FDR. Who or What do you consider a conservative? While I would agree if anyone who postulated that the liberal/conservative labels are silly, we do live in a time when they are used and misused copiously.
I’m not sure which of us misunderstands these labels the most, but I’m guessing from a bias I sense from Mises contributors that by conservative you mean Republican. If that is your meaning of conservative then I believe you are misinformed. I do not know of a single ‘conservative’ who holds those views.
I do realize that politicians may say things that could lead you to your conclusion, but if a politician were completely honest he/she would not be a politician and I believe that defines politicians of every party, be they Republican, Democrat, Green or Libertarian.
Mr. Kaufmann,
Although I agree with you about the confusion of labels such as conservative and liberal, I would take it in a different direction. Those labels have been so abused, for so long, by so many different people, that they really have no meaning any more. These days I only use them in conjunction with other qualifying terms. Few people misunderstand terms like “fiscal conservative”.
The Democrats in the South before the 1930′s were not in favour of limited government in the sense of opposing the Jim Crow laws. A lot of men with loud voices and ugly ways had taken over the Democratic party in a lot of the South.
Even before the Civil War the men of landed estates were not above supporting a lot of expensive “internal improvement” projects in such States as Virgina and North Carolina.
As for the Republicans, well they were not all bad. After all Harding ran on a ticket of reducing government taxes and spending at home and an end to intervention overseas – and he kept his promises (a rare wonder). And Calvin Coolidge kept up this line of policy.
If if had not been for the Federal Reserve Board and its policy of propping up the exchange rate of the British Pound by inflating the Dollar things would have gone well enough.
Oddly enough Herbert Hoover was one of the few men to express doubts about the policy of the Fed – although I suspect this was more out of antiBritish sentiment than anything else (as you know Hoover know nothing about economics).
I have some advice for Mr. Westley and anyone who is compelled to bend the ear of someone who just doesn’t get it yet.
Find an angle based on something more philosophical and less historical. Lament the history that unfolded as a result of ignorance about the philosophical point. I understand the value of telling it like it is, but I also understand the resistance.
Roosevelt may have had perfect understanding of what he was doing, and just been an evil man, but he may also have fallen prey to that common cognitive dissonance that makes people think state intervention is good. In either case, a lament about his apparent failure to see a simple Austrian principle here or there may take your listener a lot further than a short accurate history lesson.
My favorite simple Austrian principle is about how suffering motivates the sufferer to change. A lot of the resistance I get from others is based on a perceived obligation to reduce suffering wherever we see it. But I haven’t gotten any resistance to the idea that a suffering person might be just about to decide to change his or her life for the better, and if we relieve the suffering before they make that change, we’ve done them a terrible disservice.
So, for example, the introduction you could have given to Jackson might have gone something like this:
Chris: “It’s too bad he didn’t realize he was corroding family ties.”
Jackson: “What do you mean?”
Chris: “Social Security. Before Social Security, the older generation had to rely on their children for support into their old age. Kids nowadays just expect the taxpayers to take care of their elders.”
or:
Chris: “Too bad he didn’t realize he was taking so many people away from really useful work.”
Jackson: “What are you talking about? Didn’t his ‘New Deal’ create lots of jobs?”
Chris: “Well, the government did make up lots of projects for people to work on, and of course those workers were happy to take the higher wage the taxpayers had to pay them, but that meant they were no longer available to private industry which was building things that people really wanted.”
On the topic here of FDR and how his policies deepened and prolonged the Depression, there a cliché that amazing numbers of people go in for. It’s so widespread, I can’t help wondering if it shows up in a lot of textbooks or something. It goes:
“FDR [or, The New Deal] saved capitalism.”
It’s always stated with an imagined knowingness, as though a prima facie verity of devastating finality.
I for one am always devastated by how dopey it sounds, but frustrated because I’ve no concise response at the ready. Yes, I can explain that FDR ran against Hoover promising less, no more, government in the face of the Depression, suggesting that US voters weren’t, initially anyway, champing for a communist solution. I can explain that, at least until the US declaration of war against the Axis, the US economy only grew worse under FDR’s tenure, even by the indicators that FDR-apologizing economists use. That so-called social security is an economically wasteful, sociologically destructive, and politically immoral fraud. And so forth.
But, somehow, all this seems long-winded and whiny. Question: Does anyone reading here know a good — dare I say, snappy — retort to “FDR saved capitalism” that, at minimum, provides a good opening for deconstructing the so-called New Deal?
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