Does anyone remeber the NRA?

Skull Pilot

Diamond Member
Nov 17, 2007
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No not this NRA

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This NRA

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http://mises.org/story/3145

The ghost of FDR is everywhere, haunting both Washington and New York. The terrible trouble is that the minds in power have confused an economic wrecker with an angel of mercy. They are following his confusions and prescriptions day to day in an attempted repeat of the longest economic calamity in modern American history.

They have looked at the history of the New Deal and completely misunderstood it, believing the civics-book claptrap about how FDR saved us from the Depression, whereas the fact is that FDR's theories and policies lengthened and deepened it to the point that the only way out that the Roosevelt administration saw was war.

The great theoretical error of the New Dealers was to confuse the symptom of low prices with the causes of the economic downturn. The real problem was that prices were massively inflated before the stock-market crash of 1929. The correction had to occur and would have occurred peacefully, if not wholly painlessly, had the government not intervened.

No government in all of human history that has waged war on prices has won. The Great Depression is exhibit A.

First there was Hoover with his attack on the "bitter-end liquidationists," whose advice he summarily rejected. Instead he increased taxes, regulated against short selling, attempted to expand liquidity and the money supply, attempted to maintain existing wage rates, extended loans via government, and bailed out debtors with bankruptcy laws. For more on Hoover's antimarket program, see Rothbard's America's Great Depression.

Roosevelt took office and extended this program, while rhetorically claiming that it was the free-market policy of the Hoover administration that failed. Today we see Bush's attack on speculators and the mediawide attempt to claim that the meltdown is caused by unregulated markets run amok. No doubt the next president, whoever he may be, will continue this crusade against markets, pretending as if the Fed and the Bush administration haven't been trying antimarket means of rescue for fully two years, with each attempt backfiring.

But now let's look forward to the next step in the war on falling prices in the 1930s. FDR took office under the promise that he would curb the big spending of the Hoover administration. The tune changed once he took office. Like Hoover before him, he denounced the rich and powerful speculators, bankers, and corporations he blamed for bad economic times. Even as he was saying these things, he called together the people he regarded as the most powerful and important corporate, banking, and labor interests — together with a gaggle of professors from Columbia — and essentially asked them what they wanted to get the economy going again.

This was the Brain Trust that set the pattern for all of Washington's activities from then to the present day. John T. Flynn, in his masterful book The Roosevelt Myth, described the first round of the New Deal as

that vast hippodrome, that hectic, whirling, dizzy three-ring circus with the NRA in one ring, the AAA in another, the Relief Act in another, with General Johnson, Henry Wallace and Harry Hopkins popping the whips, while all around under the vast tent a whole drove of clowns and dervishes — the Henry Morgenthaus and Huey Longs and Dr. Townsends and Upton Sinclairs and a host of crackpots of every variety — leaped and danced and tumbled about and shouted in a great harlequinade of government, until the tent came tumbling down upon the heads of the cheering audience and the prancing buffoons.

What did the elites gathered around FDR demand? Higher prices (of course), uniform industrial codes on labor and prices, production controls, an end to competition from below, security for labor unions, guaranteed credits, import tariffs — and also the police power they needed to enforce all this. The model here was Mussolini's Italy, which was regarded at the time as an ideal system of industrial management. Of course, antitrust laws were shelved as the government itself set out to create as many trusts as possible.

What came out of these meetings was the all-around industrial planning fiasco called the National Industrial Recovery Act, which created the National Recovery Administration. The head was former draft administrator General Hugh Johnson, who brought to the effort every propaganda trick he had learned from his kidnapping years. He began with a central plan of wages, working hours, prices, and production quotas. He went on the air, to the papers, to billboards, movies, and everything else to whip up a frenzy.

A woman hangs a National Recovery Administration (NRA) eagle emblem in a restaurant window, 1934There was a symbol of compliance: The Blue Eagle. FDR said on the radio that "soldiers wear a bright badge to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. Those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance. That bright badge is the Blue Eagle." And, added Johnson, may "God have mercy on anyone who attempts to trifle with that bird."

And you know what? It is a complete disgrace that business supported it all — for a while.

Flynn tells of police raids of factories, as workers were lined up and interrogated to make sure that they weren't working overtime and weren't accepting less than the government-approved minimum. Consumers were arrested for paying less than the approved minimum prices. A tailor named Jack Magid in New Jersey was arrested and jailed for charging 35 cents instead of 40 cents to press a pair of pants. In time, the NRA became unenforceable, as black markets sprung up in every industry. The crackdown became worse, with nighttime raids on factories, and bureaucrats chopping down doors with axes to make sure that no one was sewing clothes. The NRA staff ballooned from 60 employees to 6,000 at the national level.

The entire thing became a war on production to benefit a handful of elites, all in the name of keeping prices up, all on the profound misunderstanding that boosting prices would boost production, whereas the opposite was true. Finally the Supreme Court came to the rescue and declared the whole Soviet-like scheme unconstitutional, but, by that time, it was clear that it was unworkable and doomed to failure.

At the very same time, other sectors such as banking and agriculture were being administered by other destructive schemes, all based on economic error. The result was fantastic waste, disastrous attacks on freedom and productivity, a regimentation of the entire country under a dictator, and a prolongation of the Depression, which went on and on.



No matter how many disasters FDR created — and it was nonstop — and no matter how much his ridiculous "rabbits from the hat" were exposed as economically harebrained, with every new bureau, every new law, every new initiative, the economy continued to sink.

The New Deal is a paradigmatic case of how to turn a downturn into a depression. That US leaders regard this as a model to follow does not speak very well of their economic literacy, and it doesn't bode well for our future.

On the other hand, if you want to see how to handle a crisis, consider the Panic of 1819. Never heard of it? That's because it came and went, and that's because the government did nothing about it.


We seem to be stepping onto this path again. All we need now is our own symbol of compliance. How about this

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I Bend over for the Bail Out
 
Why didn't you support Ron Paul during the primaries?
 
Why didn't you support Ron Paul during the primaries?


I always said I liked RP but he had no chance of winning. So I thought(wrongly) that I would vote for the most electable guy that was closest to my own political leanings which was Romney at the time.

I was going to hold my nose and vote for JM as a lesser of two evils thing because again, a libertarian has no chance of winning the presidency but I didn't foresee a trillion dollar taxpayer raping bail out in the future. Did you?

Jesus what do you want from me?
 
I always said I liked RP but he had no chance of winning. So I thought(wrongly) that I would vote for the most electable guy that was closest to my own political leanings which was Romney at the time.

I was going to hold my nose and vote for JM as a lesser of two evils thing because again, a libertarian has no chance of winning the presidency but I didn't foresee a trillion dollar taxpayer raping bail out in the future. Did you?

Jesus what do you want from me?

I don't WANT anything from you, bro. I'm being a bit tough on you because these were exactly the things the Ron Paul supporters were trying to get people to realize. Things like this bailout, and how bad the economy really WAS. We had a REAL CHOICE, and we BLEW IT. Now we're going to pay an awful price for it.

It needs to stop being about who supposedly "can win", and be about who is BEST. Ron Paul could easily have won if all the people who LIKED him but wouldn't VOTE for him, would have instead voted for him. I canvassed a lot for the man, and I ran into a LOT of people who were like that. They really liked him but were afraid to "waste" their vote. And now, ironically, they'll be wasting their vote ANYWAY.

It just saddens me, that's all. I'll take what I can get though, and at least you're open to the Austrian school. You can make up for it though, by doing what you can to spread the word about how our current monetary policy under the Fed is a failure. Tell everyone you know, in fact, SHOW everyone you know.
 
I don't WANT anything from you, bro. I'm being a bit tough on you because these were exactly the things the Ron Paul supporters were trying to get people to realize. Things like this bailout, and how bad the economy really WAS. We had a REAL CHOICE, and we BLEW IT. Now we're going to pay an awful price for it.

It needs to stop being about who supposedly "can win", and be about who is BEST. Ron Paul could easily have won if all the people who LIKED him but wouldn't VOTE for him, would have instead voted for him. I canvassed a lot for the man, and I ran into a LOT of people who were like that. They really liked him but were afraid to "waste" their vote. And now, ironically, they'll be wasting their vote ANYWAY.

I'll give you that. In my voting life, I was always of the mind that I had to vote for the best guy who had a chance of winning. But I am not there anymore. Perhaps I have given up on politicians in general and certainly my cynicism extends to the libertarians but I'll vote Libertarian this year. I've always thought that libertarians had the best shot at winning local elections and I do vote for them whenever possible but they don't yet have the clout needed for national politics. Yes your answer will be" But if you don't vote for them, they won't get the clout" and you'd be right of course.

It just saddens me, that's all. I'll take what I can get though, and at least you're open to the Austrian school. You can make up for it though, by doing what you can to spread the word about how our current monetary policy under the Fed is a failure. Tell everyone you know, in fact, SHOW everyone you know.

hey, I know what you're saying and I'll take the hit for hedging my bets as I have done in the past. But hopefully people will get mad as I finally have and change the way they vote.
 
I don't WANT anything from you, bro. I'm being a bit tough on you because these were exactly the things the Ron Paul supporters were trying to get people to realize. Things like this bailout, and how bad the economy really WAS. We had a REAL CHOICE, and we BLEW IT. Now we're going to pay an awful price for it.

It needs to stop being about who supposedly "can win", and be about who is BEST. Ron Paul could easily have won if all the people who LIKED him but wouldn't VOTE for him, would have instead voted for him. I canvassed a lot for the man, and I ran into a LOT of people who were like that. They really liked him but were afraid to "waste" their vote. And now, ironically, they'll be wasting their vote ANYWAY.

It just saddens me, that's all. I'll take what I can get though, and at least you're open to the Austrian school. You can make up for it though, by doing what you can to spread the word about how our current monetary policy under the Fed is a failure. Tell everyone you know, in fact, SHOW everyone you know.

If Paul hadn't chosen to run on the Republican ticket he would be sitting pretty right now.
 
I'll give you that. In my voting life, I was always of the mind that I had to vote for the best guy who had a chance of winning. But I am not there anymore. Perhaps I have given up on politicians in general and certainly my cynicism extends to the libertarians but I'll vote Libertarian this year. I've always thought that libertarians had the best shot at winning local elections and I do vote for them whenever possible but they don't yet have the clout needed for national politics. Yes your answer will be" But if you don't vote for them, they won't get the clout" and you'd be right of course.



hey, I know what you're saying and I'll take the hit for hedging my bets as I have done in the past. But hopefully people will get mad as I finally have and change the way they vote.

The only reason they don't get the national clout is because of the media. All that would need to happen is for the MSM outlets to cover 3rd parties equally. I mean, that is LITERALLY all it would take. The public perception would naturally gravitate, just by it being burned into their collective conscious on a daily basis. By seeing 3rd parties given equal coverage on the news, it would automatically lend credence to them.

Look how close Perot got, and he didn't exactly get "equal" coverage. Perot could very well WIN an election in TODAY'S environment.
 
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I'll give you that. In my voting life, I was always of the mind that I had to vote for the best guy who had a chance of winning. But I am not there anymore. .....
I am on the opposite path, friend. I used to vote for the best candidate even if he was a 3rd party and had no chance of winning. I might still do that if the election were not close or there wasn't much difference between the major candidates. But now we have a choice between a candidate that I agree with about 1/2 the time and one that I never agree with. Moreover the latter is a Marxist with ties to racists and terrorists.

In an election like this the time to make your protest vote is in the Primary, and I voted for Keyes. Now, however, is time to fall in line and be a "good Republican".
 
The NRA kept a lot of your grandfathers from starving folks.

Show your appreciation.
 
The NRA kept a lot of your grandfathers from starving folks.

Show your appreciation.
My grandfather voted Republican in every election during his adult lifetime. He never joined a union and in fact hated them. He worked every day during the depression in spite of a factory closing around him. Your precious federal programs to "protect workers" only serve to punish the ones who work the hardest.
 
The NRA kept a lot of your grandfathers from starving folks.

Show your appreciation.

The NRA and much of the rest of the New Deal was pure Mussolini-style cartel fascism, the very thing that liberals are supposed to oppose.

New Deal programs also mandated minimum price floors for agricultural products, so people quite literally had hunger gnawing at their bellies. It would be one thing if FDR's programs were ineffective, but they actually took a problem and made it worse.
 
Here's some news. It's failed. Laissez faire capitalism is breaking down all over the planet right now. Watch the socialist methods deal with the mess.

Enjoy your delusions while people in the real world fix the problems the free market zealots have wrought on us all.
 
Here's some news. It's failed. Laissez faire capitalism is breaking down all over the planet right now. Watch the socialist methods deal with the mess.

Enjoy your delusions while people in the real world fix the problems the free market zealots have wrought on us all.

ACtually it was even worse than laisse fair capitalism. I actually agree with our Mises insititute chums here who insist laisse fair capitlism is not at fault here because in laisse fair capitalism this whole system could never have happened. Capitalism itself is impossible without some government backing it up, so laisse fair capitalism is itself a creature as mythical a the unicorn.

This event was private banks given license (from the government) to print money, and they STILL screwed up.

This is the worst possible mixture of capitalism and socialism.

It is socialism for the master class and capitalism for the rest of us.
 
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Here's some news. It's failed. Laissez faire capitalism is breaking down all over the planet right now. Watch the socialist methods deal with the mess.

Enjoy your delusions while people in the real world fix the problems the free market zealots have wrought on us all.
I'll tell you what let's try this then. We'll ship all out liberals-socialists over to you, you send all your free market types to us, and we'll see who's doing better ten years from now. Deal?
 
I'll tell you what let's try this then. We'll ship all out liberals-socialists over to you, you send all your free market types to us, and we'll see who's doing better ten years from now. Deal?

I just asked our free market types and they said they want to stay here but we'll take your progressives.

We'll leave the light on out the front :D
 
If Paul hadn't chosen to run on the Republican ticket he would be sitting pretty right now.

How so? He would have gotten ZERO media coverage. Did you hear about one single 3rd party candidate on the news during the primaries? I didn't, and I probably watched more MSM during those few months than I ever have.

You aren't suggesting that he should have run on the Dem ticket, are you?
 
You liberals need to understand that the US system is NOT a free market. It's made to APPEAR as one, so that as it fails like it has, it can be blamed on free market capitalism, and usher in the positive feelings about this new era of socialism it seems like we're going to get. And I don't say that because of Obama. We're getting socialism with Obama or McCain, some of you just haven't woken up to that yet.

I'd love for ANY of the free market bashing liberals to explain how this market is in any way FREE.
 

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