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Ahh, the "Raw Deal"...as many people called it. There's also a great research paper done by the Reserve Bank of Minnesota, that comes to the same conclusion; that FDR's New Deal postponed the recovery...and actually extended the misery.

What's amazing about the New Deal is how many progressives give credit to FDR for his foresight in creating this huge central government, when in reallity, FDR was doing nothing more than copying what was already going on in socialist Europe at that time. FDR's administration (Brain Trust) was filled with utopian social-ites, such as his chief economic advisor (Rexford Tugwell) who openly praised communism for being "able to produce goods in greater quantities than capitalism, so as to spread such prosperity as there is over wider areas of the population." When liberals talk about the "tripling" of the deficit under Reagan, they should immediately be reminded of FDR's administration, whose New Deals created far more debt. When FDR entered the WH, the deficit was around $2.2 billion (1933); within 10 years that deficit would increase to $57.4 billion. While WWII can take some responsibility for these numbers, this deficit was substantial even before the war began.

The fact is, FDR's New Deals did nothing more than control and restrict the competitive sector while the government practically subsidized the entire labor force through "work programs" and HUGE marginal tax rates. Such a threat to free enterprise where these programs that even reknowned Democrats of the day objected to them. William Green, President of the AFL, declared that FDR's Civilian Corps "smacks of Facsism, of Hitlerism, of a form of Sovietism." Grace Abbott to the DNC Labor leader, John L. Lewis told the NAACP in 1940 that, "Mr. Roosevelt made depression and unemployment a chronic fact in American life." Even Gottfried Harberler, Professor of Economics at Harvard and President of the American Economic Association called the failure of the New Deal a policy disaster "unparalleled in other countries."

It was Churchill who summed it up nicley in 1937 when he said, "the Washington administration has waged so ruthless a war on private enterprise that the US is actually leading the world back into the trough of depression." And Churchill was right as by 1938 the country was experiencing a recession within a depression with unemployment climbing back up to 20%. If FDR's New Deal was responsible for ending the Depression, it sure wasn't working...and even by the end of the decade, with the war ecomomy reving up, unemployment was still as high as 17.2%. Compare any of the economic indicators from when FDR first took office to the end of the decade and you will see that the New Deal not only didn't help the economy, it stalled it, creating the longest depression in this country's history.

Interesting synopsis. However, didn't Churchill go along with socialistic programs in England after WWII? Social security comes to mind.

I may be wrong...seems to me I heard it somewhere?

Thank you for a most informative reply regarding my remark about the "Raw Deal". In particular, I was not aware of Churchill's criticisms of FDR's horrendous policies.

Also...

. FDR's administration (Brain Trust) was filled with utopian social-ites, such as his chief economic advisor (Rexford Tugwell) who openly praised communism for being "able to produce goods in greater quantities than capitalism, so as to spread such prosperity as there is over wider areas of the population."

Interesting. I have often thought that FDR brought his Wash DC administration from his governor's administration in Albany. Among these were the finest group of socialists, socialite fashionable communists and more insidious, communist agents loyal only to Moscow. That certainly was a bullet America dodged by virtue of the US (and USSR) having to deal with the belligerents in Berlin and Tokyo. As for socialism's ability to produce prosperity, nothing could be further from the facts as was revealed when the Soviet Union collapsed. The real, "Dirty Little Secret" of socialism, is that it always produces a shortage of necessities.

Buck.

I think it was the problems of the New Deal that inspired Freidrich A. Hayek to write in 1944 one of the most influential books of the 20th Century, The Road to Serfdom.

I am glad that Hayek lived long enough to see Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan embraced the lessons learned from this book and caused the great economic boom of the 1980's in the UK and USA, respectively.

If you think FDR's "New Deal" was raw, just wait until you have to live under "The New World Order!"