Known as FDR, Roosevelt was the only President to serve more than two terms. Taking office in 1933 and serving until his death in 1945, he presided over one of the most tumultuous times in our history. A recession and a world war happened on his watch.
While famous for his “new deals,” and the Civilian Conservation Corps (pronounced “corpse” by Obama), he also established our social security program in 1935.
The interesting and ironic thing about FDR’s governmental, economic interventions is that, in hindsight, they appear to have prolonged our country’s recession rather than helping it.
Harold L. Cole, Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Lee E. Ohanian, Professor of Economics at UCLA published a research project in the Journal of Political Economy in August, 2004. Titled “How Government Prolonged The Depression” it reads:
The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes. Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”
They conclude that FDR’s policies added at least 7 years to the depression!
FDR’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau wrote this in his diary, “We have tried spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. We have never made good on our promises. I say after 8 years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…and an enormous debt to boot!”
Maybe it would serve Obama well to take a history lesson.
When government taxes, borrows or spends, it simply shifts unemployment from one sector to another. (Of course, the sector that benefits tends to be a political favorite of the shifter.)
Columnist Walter Williams writes, “Between 1976 and 1930, our nation has seen both mild and severe economic downturns, sometimes called panics, that have ranged from one to seven years. During the interval, no one considered it to be the business of our federal government to try to get the economy out of a depression because there was no constitutional authority to do so. It took Hoover, FDR and a frightened and derelict U.S. Supreme Court to turn what might have been a 3 – 4 year sharp downturn into a 15-year meltdown.”
I told a Democrat friend of mine that if Obama got elected, he better hang on to his wallet.
The federal government is going to have to raise income taxes. They absolutely refuse to cut spending. (Especially for their own! If I only would have had a crystal ball 40 years ago, I would have become a government employee!)
Back to history….The last year of Hoover’s administration, the top marginal tax rate was raised from 24% to 63%.
During FDR’s administration, the top rate was first raised to 79%....and later to 90%! In 1941, FDR even proposed a 99.5% marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000!
Soak the rich. Income redistribution. Socialism.
I was always told to study hard….work hard….excel and your efforts will reap rewards. Apparently I have done so, in order to gift a huge portion of my rewards to the Jeff Spicoli slackers of the world who just have no clue.
Hamilton: Why don't you get a job, Spicoli?
Spicoli: What for?
Hamilton: You need money.
Spicoli: All I need are some tasty waves, cool buds and I'm fine!
I have all the sympathy in the world for the disabled – those who are at a clear disadvantage due to physical, mental or emotional injuries. We should make sure these folks have adequate care. But we should not take care of those who are simply lazy.
For them I advocate letting the capitalistic market do the sorting. The laws of supply and demand should apply. (Those with skills and talents that are rare and in huge demand should earn the most money.)
We don’t need our big-brother, federal government to meddle in these affairs. As history has shown, they only make the problems worse.
And that's something that our government is especially good at doing….making things worse.
Isn’t that right, Mr. Hand?
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