Wry Catcher
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #61
Coming from someone who cannot engage in serious debate.
Anyway, we could go through the domestic programs and detail how each one served to deepen and prolong the Depression but the main change is: FDR was the first president to say it was government's jobs to solve problems that had previously been solved privately, by families, communities and charities.
This resulted in an entitlement mentality that is sadly with us today. We see it everyday, even on these boards.
That is the problem.
The problem is Rabbi, you offer simple explanations to complex issues. All things economic were not going so well before FDR, or did you rewrite history again?
that's it? "They weren't going so well"? That's your argument??
In fact the U.S. achieved a world class level of industrialization from the end of the Civil war to the 1920s. Off hand I do not know what the growth rate in GDP was but I would bet phenomenal.
After FDR that rate slowed dramatically. Things appeared fine because we were the lone industrial power after WW2. But once the Germans and Japanese rebuilt their infrastructure we were at a competitive loss.
We still have a taxation and social welfare system that discourages productivity, earning, and risk taking and rewards the opposite.
Are you intentially obtuse? ALL things economic. Did the working class live the life of leisure or even have a secure retirement and a home of their own? Did the children of working class Americans have college as an option, or was the 8th grade sufficient for them to go to work.
Is that the world you and other reactionaries hope America becomes, a return to the 19th century, where coal polluted our air and water and working Americans were treated less well than the horse? Where men worked until they died and their widows lived in poor houses (evidence, do a little research and review the census from the late 19th century).
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