Minimum Wage (poor because of their own decisions growing up)
Unemployment Benefits beyond 99 weeks (intentional abuse of government handouts)
I'm begging you to get a copy of Ronald Reagan's obscure autobiography "Where's the Rest of Me". In this book Reagan tells of his family's struggles during the Great Depression. You will learn that the Reagan's, despite trying very hard, couldn't find sufficient work - they couldn't take care of themselves. There simply were not enough jobs for everyone who wanted to work. The Reagan Family benefited immensely from Government Assistance, including the father getting a
government job so he could save his family. [When the private sector economy, which had destroyed itself through an unregulated banking crisis, failed to produce enough jobs for people, FDR took action and put people who wanted to work back to work building infrastructure. This not only created valuable assets for the future, but it also put spenders back in the economy, so people could buy things from local businesses and help prevent them from going under.] FDR didn't view this stuff as a hand out; he didn't view saving the Reagan's as a handout but an investment in the American People. A reasonable supposition by FDR would be: what if the Reagan Family includes a future scientist or President? So FDR invested in the Reagan's during a time when economic output was so low that the economy could not satisfy everyone who wanted to work, including the Reagan's.
To scale: If there are 10 million people who want work and only 1 million available jobs, than not everyone who wants to work will be able to find work. What scares me is that you probably don't know the ratio of available jobs to people who want to work. You believe choice explains everything - and that unemployment is 100% caused by people's choice not to work, rather than a factual absence of available jobs. Son, the Reagan's chose to look for work, but they couldn't find it because there were not enough jobs. In some big cities there were as many as 2,000 applications for every 1 job offering. So FDR helped people who couldn't find work until the economy recovered. Some people think that FDR's investment in Human Capital (i.e., people who wanted to work but couldn't find jobs) paid off. Ronald Reagan is living proof. This is why in his autobiography he confesses to being deeply indebted to FDR. This is why he was a member of the Democratic Party and campaigned for Truman.
Do you know how much money we give to Saudi Arabia? Do you know how much money we have given, at various times in our history, to Iran, Iraq and Syria? And now you are mad that we diverted a little bit of that money to our own people - like the Reagan's - who needed it, and who used it to better themselves and help this nation. Your hatred for hard working American Families who have fallen on hard times makes you worse than our enemies.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJDhS4oUm0M]Reagan Campaigns for Truman in 1948 - YouTube[/ame]
Please stop repeating Rightwing Talking Points and study this stuff.
The Hoover Dam Project employed 20,000 workers during the heart of the Great Depression. If your party was in charge, it would have never happened. Many of those 20,000 hard working Americans would have been destroyed by the Depression and the ******* Southwest would still be in the dark ages.