New Deal or Raw Deal

I finished this book today by Burton Folsum Jr out on the deck enjoying the great weather and the day off from work. I'd say that our current American predicament is based off couple key myths that tend to work together to keep us heading toward a continued loss of freedom and economic decline:

1. "Liberal" = "left". Left is ALWAYS larger government, more centralized government control, less individual freedom and the risk of dictatorship. Communist, socialist, fascist, monarchist ... ALL are on the left! The idea that Fascism is "right" is lunacy -- for one thing, "Nazis" were "National Socialsts", and fascism isn't exactly "libertarian". The "right" is about "LIBERTY" ... meaning "libertarian", LESS government, more indiviual freedom -- going too far to the right means one is an ANARCHIST, not a fascist!
2. "The New Deal was a great success. It certainly wasn't an economic success -- it was a POLITICAL success for the forces of the left which the elite and MSM in this nation find to be a wonderful thing. This book covers #2 very well.
   

The following quote from Henry Morgenthau Jr, one of FDRs closest associates and his Secretary of the Treasury at the time he made this statement before his fellow Democrats in Congress in May of 1939:

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong...somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. 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.

Sound familiar? Here is a good quote from Henry Hazlitt on the subject of government spending:

The government spenders have the better of the argument with all those who cannot see beyond the immediate range of their physical eyes. They can see the bridge. But if they had taught themselves to look for indirect as well as direct consequences they can once more see in the eye of imagination the possibilities that have never been allowed to come into existence. They can see the unbuilt homes, the unmade cars and washing machines, the unmade dresses and coats, perhaps the unmade or unsold foodstuffs. These homes, cars and washing machines were unbuilt of course, because taxpayers sent their money to Washington for the WPA rather than buying their families a new car or a new coat. We can think of these nonexistent objects once perhaps, but we cannot keep them in our minds as we can the bridge that we pass every working day.

The problem is of course greater than that, because both the MSM and the Democrats are going to brag up the benefits of their spending, while not saying anything about the costs.

The book goes through a good amount of detail of the corruption of the patronage created by the New Deal. The spending for the WPA was increased in swing states in election years, and the WPA workers were used as extensions of the Democrat party. Naturally as today, the unions, farmers, and other groups were provided kick-backs that all but made them wards of the one-party Democrat state.

The end of the book provides a lot of great detail on how going into the depression, the US was leading the world -- by the end of the 30's, we had no recovery and had slipped to being one of the worst of the industrialized economies. The New Deal successfully elected a lot of Democrats, created a lot of government dependency, and set the nation firmly on a path to ruin with the advent of the Social Security entitlement that sold the obviously false claim that "we can all get out more than we put in".

The New Deal was an economic disaster that started us on a path to future disasteres, one of which we are experiencing now. Politically, it laid the foundation for dictatorship or worse, LBJ framed it up, and now BO seems to be doing the roof and paint on the fascist edifice.

Raw deal indeed!