Rockingham, AH Deist
3rd July 2010, 09:10 PM
Just wanting to drive a stake through that enduring leftwing myth that laizess-faire policies caused the great depression with this graph showing US public spending as a proportion of GNP:)
As you will see following the recession that followed the war Harding cut public spending and taxation, which was followed by recovery and golden years. Now obviously correlation doesn't [always] equal causation, but those lefties whom proclaim the New Deal to have ended the depression never cared about that.
More importantly, those lefties are fundamentally wrong in their claim that Hoover destroyed the economy through laisezz-faire policies and Roosevelt fixed it through big spending. As you will see in the graph, Hoover actually DOUBLED government spending-whereas it spending jerked up and down but didn't increase an awful lot(about 10%, to my eye) under FDR.
In other words, Hoover was an economic leftwinger- Big spending, tariffs etc. FDR, on the other hand, was comparitively conservative in economic terms.
Quoting Hoover in 1932:
Two courses were open to us. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. No Government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. . . . For the first time in the history of depressions, dividends and profits and the cost of living have been reduced before wages have been sacrificed. (Hoover's acceptance speech, 11 August 1932)
As you will see following the recession that followed the war Harding cut public spending and taxation, which was followed by recovery and golden years. Now obviously correlation doesn't [always] equal causation, but those lefties whom proclaim the New Deal to have ended the depression never cared about that.
More importantly, those lefties are fundamentally wrong in their claim that Hoover destroyed the economy through laisezz-faire policies and Roosevelt fixed it through big spending. As you will see in the graph, Hoover actually DOUBLED government spending-whereas it spending jerked up and down but didn't increase an awful lot(about 10%, to my eye) under FDR.
In other words, Hoover was an economic leftwinger- Big spending, tariffs etc. FDR, on the other hand, was comparitively conservative in economic terms.
Quoting Hoover in 1932:
Two courses were open to us. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. No Government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. . . . For the first time in the history of depressions, dividends and profits and the cost of living have been reduced before wages have been sacrificed. (Hoover's acceptance speech, 11 August 1932)