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Originally Posted by jackson33
Actually, FDR's worker programs and WWII had the same overall effects on the economy. Some (very minor) infrastructure was added in the 30's, but by enlarge it simply pumped money back into the buying power of a few.
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To be charitable, this is a joke.
The TVA alone electrified the entire Mid-Atlantic Range and produced power necessary for a huge increase in production capacity that would have never happened had the Coolidge-Hoover strategy of "letting business be business" been continued, and would have severely limited our capacity to ramp up production that did indeed win WWII. This network of water and power infrastructure is mostly still there today, and to dismiss it so blithely is in direct contradiction to reality.
While this and many other infrastructure projects (go anywhere in America and check out how many roads were built in the 1930's that are only slightly modified today), were essential to winning WWII, production in WWII did indeed overheat the economy, and when the war ended the huge over capacity caused a very painful recession.
You're of course right that by 1940 the economy had recovered, and therefore it didn't need the WWII stimulus!
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Originally Posted by jackson33
It did NOT create wealth which is and always has been the foundation for National Growth.
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I know that it is a popular conservative truism that "government spending never creates wealth," but it's so easy to disprove, that I'm amazed that anyone can say it with a straight face. Where would we be without railroads funded by government in the 1800's? Without the Interstate Highway System? Without dams and aquaducts?
I know that Greenpeace and the Sierra Club would love it, but not anyone who wants growth!
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Originally Posted by jackson33
...Income Taxes, rose from 30% in 1929 to 70% in 1937...
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...at a time when only the very rich made any money at all--or paid the 70% rate--because, well, there was a Depression! Your own figures--although misinterpreted--bear this out:
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Originally Posted by jackson33
yet unemployment and many traditional key factors to judge the economy remained the same. GNP (todays dollars) 1929...103.8 Billion, 1933 55.8 Billion...
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GNP was nearly cut in half! As a result, unemployment hardly "remained the same," it jumped to 25% and underemployment affected 60% of the remaining workforce.
Did this take time to correct? Absolutely! Were there mistakes along the way, like over-regulation? Sure! And Roosevelt himself recognized them and changed policy rather than mindlessly running the country off a cliff by insisting on irrational "consistency to principles of free markets" that caused the depression in the first place, and has arguably caused our current mess as well.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago,
Buffy
