California jobless rate swells to 12.6 percent

[oreo]

It's a Leftwing Myth that government spending got us out of the Great Depression. It actually made things worse (just like Obamanomics is now):

'He got us out of the Great Depression." That's probably the most frequent comment made about President Franklin Roosevelt, who died 65 years ago today. Every Democratic president from Truman to Obama has believed it, and each has used FDR's New Deal as a model for expanding the government.

It's a myth. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression—not during the 1930s, and only in a limited sense during World War II.

Let's start with the New Deal. Its various alphabet-soup agencies—the WPA, AAA, NRA and even the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)—failed to create sustainable jobs. In May 1939, U.S. unemployment still exceeded 20%. European countries, according to a League of Nations survey, averaged only about 12% in 1938. The New Deal, by forcing taxes up and discouraging entrepreneurs from investing, probably did more harm than good.

What about World War II? We need to understand that the near-full employment during the conflict was temporary. Ten million to 12 million soldiers overseas and another 10 million to 15 million people making tanks, bullets and war materiel do not a lasting recovery make. The country essentially traded temporary jobs for a skyrocketing national debt. Many of those jobs had little or no value after the war.

No one knew this more than FDR himself. His key advisers were frantic at the possibility of the Great Depression's return when the war ended and the soldiers came home. The president believed a New Deal revival was the answer—and on Oct. 28, 1944, about six months before his death, he spelled out his vision for a postwar America. It included government-subsidized housing, federal involvement in health care, more TVA projects, and the "right to a useful and remunerative job" provided by the federal government if necessary.

Roosevelt died before the war ended and before he could implement his New Deal revival. His successor, Harry Truman, in a 16,000 word message on Sept. 6, 1945, urged Congress to enact FDR's ideas as the best way to achieve full employment after the war.

Congress—both chambers with Democratic majorities—responded by just saying "no." No to the whole New Deal revival: no federal program for health care, no full-employment act, only limited federal housing, and no increase in minimum wage or Social Security benefits.

Instead, Congress reduced taxes. Income tax rates were cut across the board. FDR's top marginal rate, 94% on all income over $200,000, was cut to 86.45%. The lowest rate was cut to 19% from 23%, and with a change in the amount of income exempt from taxation an estimated 12 million Americans were eliminated from the tax rolls entirely.

Corporate tax rates were trimmed and FDR's "excess profits" tax was repealed, which meant that top marginal corporate tax rates effectively went to 38% from 90% after 1945.

Georgia Sen. Walter George, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, defended the Revenue Act of 1945 with arguments that today we would call "supply-side economics." If the tax bill "has the effect which it is hoped it will have," George said, "it will so stimulate the expansion of business as to bring in a greater total revenue."

He was prophetic. By the late 1940s, a revived economy was generating more annual federal revenue than the U.S. had received during the war years, when tax rates were higher. Price controls from the war were also eliminated by the end of 1946. The U.S. began running budget surpluses.

Congress substituted the tonic of freedom for FDR's New Deal revival and the American economy recovered well. Unemployment, which had been in double digits throughout the 1930s, was only 3.9% in 1946 and, except for a couple of short recessions, remained in that range for the next decade.

The Great Depression was over, no thanks to FDR. Yet the myth of his New Deal lives on. With the current effort by President Obama to emulate some of FDR's programs to get us out of the recent deep recession, this myth should be laid to rest.

Burt Folsom: Did FDR End the Depression? - WSJ.com

Good grief. Want I should post other 'authoritive' essays with very different conclusions. As I suggested, there are many opinions - most of which are biased in one way or another. I suggest you get a copy of SimCity and play a few rounds. Too many taxes, to few taxes = a failed result.
No one likes to pay taxes, everyone likes the benefits of them. Do you cut 911 calls and dispatchers or first responders? Do you smile when you run over a pot hole with a brand new tire? Enjoy streets and parks overgrown with weeds, rats in restaurants or floods caused by defered maintanence? Should the water supply be privatized? Does clean air matter?
The problem with 'your kind' is you're stuck on ideology and believe the half-truths of the propaganda purveyors.

When you have budgetery deficits like what we're running--that is exactly what you do. You cut government spending. Right now in Colorado Springs--they have turned off the street lights to save money. If you don't--you pay a much higher price down the road.

The problem is-- the Federal Government couldn't keep a lemonade stand out of red ink. They refuse to cut any government programs--even the unnecessary ones--and spend our money like it was growing on trees.

I agree--that FDR only prolonged the great depression--because he was trying to do what Obama is doing-MASSIVE government spending to create jobs---and most of us know that the ONLY thing that really brought us out of the great depression was WW2. And that's the scary part.

 

[oreo]

How did the Great Depression End, and why? Government spending. Huge amounts of money spent on arms production and the build up of a huge fightng force.
Not by cutting taxes, but by selling bonds (just like the founding fathers did to pay for our war of independence) and putting people to work. Yes, even government employees.

Are you suggesting that we need to have WW3 to get the economy moving again?

Because what we have done--hasn't done anything except drive us into further debt.