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To: FITZ
Even in the worst of the Depression, the majority of people still had jobs

Fewer people could afford to buy things back then.

Stock crash aftermath, by Thomas Sowell

The fact that the first government efforts to get the country out of a depression -- by both Hoover and FDR -- were followed by the longest depression in our history has also not been lost on some. Quite aside from the specific harm done by specific programs, the general uncertainty generated by unpredictable government interventions made investors reluctant to make the long-term commitments needed to generate more jobs, more output, and more purchasing power.

Not only the Federal Reserve and two presidents managed to make the Great Depression worse, so did Congress. When it passed the Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930, it contributed to a worldwide contraction in international trade, as country after country tried to "save jobs" by protectionism.

The notion that the stock market crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression that ravaged the 1930s has long been popular on the left, since this blames capitalism and casts government in the role of rescuer of the economy. However, Professor Peter Temin of MIT has pointed out that in 1987 the "stock market fell almost exactly the same amount on almost exactly the same days of the year" -- and there was no depression.

The Reagan administration was not the New Deal. The economy kept on growing.


162 posted on 12/19/2003 4:46:40 PM PST by syriacus (Schumer's unhappy federal judges have lifetime positions, so he should work to amend that.)
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To: syriacus
Fewer people could afford to buy things back then.

A lot of people today can only afford to buy things now because they get food stamps, a welfare check, Medicaid, government housing etc. What happens if the huge social programs were ever to be cut? We didn't eliminate poverty with those programs and I don't see how programs like the earned income welfare handout is so different than New Deal programs.

In this area, you don't see the NAFTA displaced workers ----- thousands of former garment workers ---- leaving the state to look for jobs ---- they stay here unemployed living off welfare or SSDI. You won't see them picking crops or doing anything else now that their former employment is gone.

165 posted on 12/19/2003 5:12:53 PM PST by FITZ
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To: syriacus
Actually, the Smoot-Hawley tariff is getting a bum-rap. Even Milton Friedman has more or less admitted it.

Other factors played a bigger part: You have already noted appropriately the negative role of the confiscatory policies of FDR discouraging investment.

And then there were other discouragements and obstacles: U.S. capitalists had gotten sucked into Russia in 1925-1930 by Lenin, under his 'New Economic Program' when he pretended that he was abandoning communism...if the West would just, pretty please, finance the start of modern capitalism in his country. When these billions of U.S. and Western capital was ultimately nationalized at the end of the sucker play, a lot of the companies...including Ford which got burned really bad, no longer had the ready capital wherewithal to reinvest and innovate in the U.S. This contributed heavily to the stagnation of the U.S. economy post-crash...

The stock market crash also did dry up a lot of venture capital. This is not a leftist or rightist fable. It's facts that both Dow and IBD would corroborate. A number of stock prices 'came back' (as monies gravitated to the safe haven of the 'blue chips') but the over all effect was a drastic contraction of overall capital available for new issues.

275 posted on 12/21/2003 7:03:40 AM PST by Paul Ross (Reform Islam Now! -- Nuke Mecca!)
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