UPDATED to add, if you came here from Tabarrok or McArdle you might want, in addition to reading this post, to have a look here and here.
Updated further to say, that goes for you, New York Times readers. Hi! — dana
Oh for pity’s sake. Some real news outlet needs to publish a nice short piece on conservative falsehoods about the New Deal. Amity Shlaes’s Liberty League retread has got a new lease of life, thanks to the Daily Show of all outlets (Jon Stewart, you should be ashamed) and now in the Wall Street Journal’s five “myths” about the Great Depression, we find stated as fact
As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental “pump priming,” almost one out of five workers remained unemployed.
Readers of this site know this is simply not true. For pity’s sake, Conrad Black knows this is not true. (You may here enjoy Bill Scher pointing out that Shlaes describes the Historical Statistics of the United States as an “obscurer” source of data.)
We find listed as a myth
The stock market crash in October 1929 precipitated the Great Depression. What the crash mainly precipitated was a raft of wrongheaded policies that did major damage to the economy
I’m sure Christina Romer would have something to say about that; so would Joseph Schumpeter. So indeed would Ben Bernanke. Interestingly, had the WSJ writer listed as a myth that the crash “caused” the Depression, he would have had a case. But that the crash “precipitated” the Depression is not so much myth as exactly right: it crystallized and let drop consumer worries, accelerating the downturn by occasioning a drying-up of buying on credit.
We find listed as a myth
Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people
I’m sure the people saved from starving and homelessness by CWA, WPA, and CCC would differ; so would those saved from penury by FDIC; so would those saved from poverty by Social Security.
These people, these people who spend their time propagating these incorrect lessons from the Great Depression, the truth is not in them. For the record, here’s a quick look at economic performance under the New Deal.
168 comments
November 6, 2008 at 9:59 am
heydave
At this point I am forced to believe that lining a bird cage with the WSJ would be just cruel. To the bird.
November 6, 2008 at 10:00 am
Jonathan Rees
Eric:
I notice you don’t pick on the WSJ’s interpretation of Hoover. I always thought he wasn’t that bad a President, but was completely over-matched (sort of like McCain might have been had he been elected on Tuesday). That article makes him seem somewhere to the right of Karl Marx and the left of FDR.
November 6, 2008 at 10:02 am
eric
It’s true that Hoover was not a non-interventionist. It’s also true that the forms of intervention he favored were not effective.
And I do think he was actually a bad president, sorry to say, and he wasn’t above a bit of fibbing himself. One of these days I want to write a post about Hoover’s notso true version of the transition to Roosevelt’s presidency.
November 6, 2008 at 10:37 am
hebisner
If it’s any consolation, Amity Schlaes was for the most part incomprehensible on the Daily Show. If you didn’t know before what her deal was, I doubt anyone was enlightened by her interview, or felt compelled to buy her book.
November 6, 2008 at 10:41 am
Russell Belding
Both Schlaes and Stewart were incomprehensible. I usually get the idea that Stewart at least reads a chapter or two to familiarize himself with a book; in this case it didn’t even seem like he got through the blurb.
November 6, 2008 at 11:15 am
Martin G.
If only we had some sort of expert on the Great Depression – someone who had scholarly insight into it – and possibly someone who knew how to write well, too. If only we had such an expert, they could write a letter to the editor, explaining these facts. Or maybe even an op-ed piece in some paper which could be used as parrot cage lining without being sued by the Humane Association.
November 6, 2008 at 11:51 am
SomeCallMeTim
If only we had some sort of expert on the Great Depression – someone who had scholarly insight into it – and possibly someone who knew how to write well, too.
It is, in fact, a damn shame. And if we found such a person, it wouldn’t hurt to know people who could place such a piece.
November 6, 2008 at 11:54 am
student
I suggest that Eric send an op-ed to the Washington Post– they ran a typically crummy piece by Shlaes a few months ago; maybe the editors could be convinced to publish a different, better, perspective.
November 6, 2008 at 12:01 pm
bitchphd
for pity’s sake
Twice, even! It’s so cute when Eric gets indignant.
November 6, 2008 at 12:13 pm
ben
So, you’re going to send a letter to the editor, or (as your student suggests) try to place an op-ed, right?
November 6, 2008 at 12:16 pm
eric
Letters to the editor are wastes of time—you spend an awful lot of time on something that even fewer people read than will read an op-ed.
For the same reason, I don’t like to send op-eds in over the transom—I’d much rather have an editor’s commitment, even provisionally, to publish one.
November 6, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Vance
I think it would be worth composing this op-ed on spec, though — it seems like the occasion for it will keep renewing itself.
November 6, 2008 at 12:25 pm
ari
Okay, not to pile on or anything, but why don’t you pitch an editorial to the Times? You’ve got a awesome portfolio to show them, and you just wrote the book on the Depression. Plus, Krugman’s your bff.
November 6, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Ben Alpers
It’s true that Hoover was not a non-interventionist. It’s also true that the forms of intervention he favored were not effective.
Hoover also remade himself as a non-interventionist critic of the New Deal after his presidency.
November 6, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Tiny Hermaphrodite
You know whats depressing?
The Amazon rank for The Forgotten Man: 510. And that’s the hardcover. The rank for the paperback is 26.
November 6, 2008 at 12:42 pm
pushmedia1
You report total civilian unemployment. I think most economists look at non-farm unemployment and I think that’s what the WSJ is reporting on.
This is pertinent because most of the bad government policies mentioned in that article have to do with the non-farm sector (public works and tariffs).
November 6, 2008 at 12:54 pm
eric
pushmedia1, if you go through to the link, you’ll see what the WSJ is reporting on. It’s not non-farm unemployment.
November 6, 2008 at 1:02 pm
pushmedia1
Well, “as late as 1938… almost one out of five workers remained unemployed” seems to correspond to the 18% non-farm unemployment rate reported in Ba476 of HSUS.
Non-farm unemployment is the more pertinent statistic for many of the topics covered in the WSJ article and 18% is not a good unemployment statistic even if its down from a high of 32% before the New Deal.
November 6, 2008 at 1:10 pm
eric
No, that’s not even close to being right. The WSJ article says, “almost one out of five workers.” Even if it means “non-farm”—which it doesn’t credibly mean, in any non-fudging sense—it’s still committing Lebergott’s dubious practice of counting WPA etc. workers as unemployed.
Second, you really think the WSJ article is about non-farm policies? (1) Looks to me like the entire paragraph on the sins of government intervention (following “the government stepped in”) is about agricultural policy. (2) In what sense is the tariff not agricultural policy? Smoot-Hawley originated, at least in part, as an agricultural relief policy.
So I don’t think that dog will hunt.
November 6, 2008 at 1:12 pm
eric
Oh and: 18% is not a good unemployment statistic even if its down from a high of 32% before the New Deal.
No, you’re right; 18% is not good (and to repeat, really, nobody ever quotes an unqualified “unemployment rate” in the 1930s in this way).
But you’ll note that 1938 is a recession year. That’s another dishonest bit about the WSJ piece: saying “as late as 1938 … remained” kind of slides over the big improvement 1933-1937, doesn’t it?
November 6, 2008 at 1:15 pm
ben
But how many people who would otherwise be taken in by the WSJ article are reading this?
November 6, 2008 at 1:16 pm
eric
Eichengreen on Smoot-Hawley:
November 6, 2008 at 1:17 pm
eric
What’s your point, ben?
November 6, 2008 at 1:23 pm
ben
What’s your point, ben?
The question of the week.
Nothing, I guess, except that it frustrates me to see the response to a widely-read editorial in a major paper (unless that’s actually an article, not an editorial—yet worse!) be rebutted by … some dude on a blog. Admittedly you’re not just any dude—AquaDude—but still!
November 6, 2008 at 1:27 pm
eric
When a major paper offers me space to make a rebuttal, I will.
November 6, 2008 at 1:30 pm
ben
And when a woman falls out of the sky into my lap, I won’t be single anymore.
Audaces fortuna juvat, d00d. Editors help those who help themselves.
November 6, 2008 at 1:49 pm
dana
You won’t be single cuz you’ll be squished.
November 6, 2008 at 1:50 pm
pushmedia1
Well, ok maybe I’m reading too much sub-text. It seems to me the civilian non-farm unemployment number is most interesting when looking at policy’s effect late into the depression.
The sub-text to the WSJ article is this: early in the depression government policy created inefficient industries (i.e. export industries by increasing tariffs). Later in the depression policy encouraged workers to stay-in or move-to those inefficient industries (e.g. by subsidizing public works and striking deals with some industries to not allow wages to fall) which were basically manufacturing, non-farm industries. This is why non-farm numbers are a better measure of the effectiveness of policy.
Farm tariffs were bad for the normal efficiency reasons, but farmers seemed to move out farming into other sectors (at least the total employment of farmers was flat through the whole period while the work force grew substantially). Once farm labor reallocated, the problems caused by the tariffs were mitigated.
Also, the article assumes private industry can more efficiently allocate labor resources than government. Under this assumption, civilian (i.e. not including “emergency” workers) unemployment is the pertinent statistic. I know this assumption sounds all “lazy fairy” but I think its pretty reasonable if you think about it.
November 6, 2008 at 1:54 pm
bitchphd
Odds on the relative probability of a major paper asking Eric to do an op-ed vs. a woman falling out of the sky onto Ben’s lap? Anyone?
November 6, 2008 at 1:56 pm
pushmedia1
Can I just say: I heart HSUS. It should be publicly available.
November 6, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Vance
Also, the article assumes private industry can more efficiently allocate labor resources than government. Under this assumption, civilian (i.e. not including “emergency” workers) unemployment is the pertinent statistic.
What, only employment that is theoretically wise counts?
November 6, 2008 at 2:26 pm
pushmedia1
Vance, no, but if we’re wondering if policy is “good” or not we need some standard.
November 6, 2008 at 2:45 pm
ben
Odds on the relative probability of a major paper asking Eric to do an op-ed vs. a woman falling out of the sky onto Ben’s lap? Anyone?
The point stands.
November 6, 2008 at 2:46 pm
ben
You won’t be single cuz you’ll be squished.
I’ll be a singularity.
November 6, 2008 at 2:57 pm
eric
It seems to me the civilian non-farm unemployment number is most interesting when looking at policy’s effect late into the depression.
Okay: but Ba476 isn’t “civilian non-farm unemployment,” it’s “civilian private non-farm unemployment.” Which means it leaves out relief workers. And as for “late into the depression”—you have to consider the history of relief; WPA—the first permanent relief-worker agency created by the New Deal—wasn’t even enacted into law until 1935—because Roosevelt was squeamish about relief employment.
So 1937-38 isn’t “late” into the depression by that measure. Consider also Keynes’s letter to Roosevelt saying that one of the causes of the 37-38 downturn was reducing WPA spending.
November 6, 2008 at 2:59 pm
eric
(Further: I don’t have my notes in front of me, but iirc Ba476 is not “usual” civilian unemployment—that’s Ba475—Ba476 is the series David Weir specifically constructed to meet Lebergott’s objection about counting WPA and other relief workers. So it’s not the ordinary way you’d report unemployment.)
November 6, 2008 at 3:04 pm
eric
I think its pretty reasonable if you think about it
Your version of the article is more reasonable than the article. The article is written in hyped-up dishonest op-ed prose that kludges together Hoover and Roosevelt under the heading of “government intervention” which is argued to be bad.
Government intervention under Roosevelt was not (all, or even mainly) bad.
Bank holiday—good!
Deposit insurance—good!
Allowing RFC to buy bank stock—good!
Devaluing the dollar—good!
And all were different from Hoover’s policies.
You want to argue that NRA was bad, you get no quarrel from me—nor from FDR, who described it as “pretty wrong.”
You want to argue that AAA was bad, likewise no quarrel.
You want to argue that federal relief was bad, you have to argue that it’s better to let people starve than delay the recovery by incurring inefficiency. Be my guest.
It’s hard, especially under current circumstances, to argue that we’d be better off without publicly guaranteed unemployment and old-age pensions. But you can try arguing that too, if you want to.
November 6, 2008 at 3:09 pm
eric
I heart HSUS. It should be publicly available.
On this, we agree.
Look, there are two separate points here. Is the WSJ being, at a minimum, disingenuous? I think the answer is absolutely yes, and by invoking considerable “subtext” to make it “reasonable”, forgive me if I say you’re basically conceding the point. (I notice you don’t take up Shlaes’s defense, which is very wise.)
The other point, was the New Deal any good at promoting recovery—that’s a much more complicated one, and you have to be careful—again, vastly more careful than this article, or Cole and Ohanian, or any of many New Deal bashers are—about what you mean by “the New Deal”.
You can just about say, well, if you exclude banking policy, and monetary policy, and relief policy, then the New Deal was bad! But that’s also a species of fibbing, since the New Deal included banking policy, and monetary policy, and relief policy.
November 6, 2008 at 3:18 pm
rja
One of these days I want to write a post about Hoover’s notso true version of the transition to Roosevelt’s presidency.
David Frum covered this on Marketplace yesterday. Okay, maybe he didn’t call it “notso true.”
November 6, 2008 at 3:21 pm
AEP
What…no public historians in the crowd? Ben should go to a women’s trampoline competition and Eric should publish his op-ed on one of the many legitimate public history Web sites out there. Major (regional) papers steal from mine all the time–John Stewart googles his research. So do 10th graders. Eric! The good you can do! Give public history a good name!
November 6, 2008 at 3:34 pm
eric
one of the many legitimate public history Web sites out there
This is not a legitimate public history web site?
November 6, 2008 at 3:36 pm
pushmedia1
It tends to make my arguments look better if with them I can dismantle the best version of my opponent’s argument. I’m not sure what use there is in ascribing bad motives to the WSJ. If they had bad motives then there’s no need to argue with them.
Anyway, I agree with everything you say about the good and bad policies in the New Deal. To be honest, I don’t know the specifics enough to have an informed opinion on particular policies so I’ll just take your word for it. Perhaps in the spirit of not lumping government policies together (i.e. Hoover and Roosevelt) we should stop talking about the New Deal as monolithic policy.
The key point you made was “you want to argue that [policy x] was bad, you have to argue that it’s better to let people starve than delay the recovery by incurring inefficiency.” You’re pointing out that there’s a trade off between efficiency and poor relief. Only callous jerks (or ideologically blinded jerks) would argue we should have let people starve for the sake of higher GDP. That said, this analysis has limited application to our current predicament. There’s a big difference between redistributive policies or policies to help people make mortgage payments and policies that help people remain alive for a day or two.
Also, its important to underscore the trade-off aspect of your argument. Some New Deal policies (even if “good” in one sense or other) prolonged the depression. You’ve conceded this point and yet you get so touchy about the WSJ making the exact same point.
November 6, 2008 at 3:41 pm
eric
this analysis has limited application to our current predicament.
You bet. This post is not about our current predicament, and neither is the WSJ story.
the WSJ making the exact same point.
That is not the WSJ’s point. If the WSJ article said, “You know, we view the New Deal as an unalloyed good, but in truth, many of the goods purchased by the New Deal’s policies entailed costs”—then nobody would argue. Also, they’d never publish it.
To repeat, they describe as a myth that
That’s not a myth, that’s true.
They describe as a myth that
That’s not a myth, that’s true. Go on, tell me again that the FDIC and the Fed as it now exists aren’t better than not having those institutions.
If you want to invent a reasonable WSJ op-ed page, and then expect me to hate it, I won’t. I wish there were such a thing. But there isn’t.
November 6, 2008 at 3:52 pm
pushmedia1
>Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people
If efficiency is your normative measure (and unemployment is a measure of efficiency), then this is absolutely a myth. Policy prolonged required price/wage adjustment in the economy and so quantities had to adjust instead. In other words, unemployment was up (way up) because of government policy. If not letting people starve to death is your normative measure, then you’re right this wasn’t a myth. I’m guessing the WSJ has a much lower weight on the “don’t let people starve” norm, whereas you have a lower weight on the efficiency norm. Its not obvious what the correct weights should be.
November 6, 2008 at 3:55 pm
silbey
Its not obvious what the correct weights should be
Uh, Eric can surely answer this himself, but I’m kind on the “let’s not let people starve to death, kthxbye” side of things.
November 6, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Vance
Really. What’s so great about efficiency?
November 6, 2008 at 3:57 pm
eric
So wait, in your version the crisis of 1932 resulted from too much government intervention?
November 6, 2008 at 4:00 pm
eric
oh, forget it. Silbey’s right, you’re hiding a vast reservoir of unseriousness under a veneer of reason.
November 6, 2008 at 4:13 pm
pushmedia1
Vance, living like modern humans with dishwashers, indoor plumbing, the wheel and intertubes and not like insular, murdering tribalists. I’m quit happy that I’m sitting here in my insulated house arguing with you guys instead of working the fields like my not so distant ancestors.
Silbey, you can’t have 100% weight on the no starving norm. This would mean you’re indifferent between the status quo and a policy where I get all the world’s output but only allocate enough to everyone else to allow them to barely scratch by.
Professor, partially. There are normal bubble-ish inefficiencies that are found in market economies from time to time. My view is that when these bubbles burst it can be quite painful and the political economy gets interesting as various groups want help, all in the form of efficiency reducing policy. In the 1929 case, a normal bubble popped exposing inefficiencies. Import competing industries cried and the resulting tariffs created even more inefficiency. Then wage support policy made it hard for economic actors to reallocate away from the inefficiency. Money policy could have fixed things (by inflating away high wages), but that failed too.
November 6, 2008 at 4:14 pm
otis
I think it’s okay to label Hoover a non-interventionist. Sure, he wasn’t a non-interventionist his entire life, but he was a non-interventionist at the crucial moment, when he let his liquidationist Secretary of Treasury talk him into letting the banking system fail.
Czolgosz didn’t assassinate presidents every day, but it only takes once to make you an assassin
November 6, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Brad
Uh, Eric can surely answer this himself, but I’m kind on the “let’s not let people starve to death, kthxbye” side of things.
Silbey is obviously one of those “redistributionists”….
Never can trust those
November 6, 2008 at 4:21 pm
AEP
“This is not a legitimate public history web site?”
You’re right–should have said, “non-crap public history web sites that non-academics find accessible, both in content and language.” As in, not Wikipedia. I’m following the above argument just fine. At the risk of sounding elitist, I’m betting my son’s 6th-grade social studies teacher would have quit after Eric’s third paragraph. Just saying that good history can be made digestible by people who typically learn the past through Simpson’s episodes–those people SHOULD bookmark this site, but they won’t. So….?
I WANT someone like Eric teaching my kid U.S. History; will settle for his teacher reading Eric’s op-ed piece and understanding what she’s reading. Woah..can’t tell if my standards are horribly high or terribly low. Must be a symptom of the recession–where’s Woody Guthrie when you need him?
November 6, 2008 at 4:27 pm
pushmedia1
Brad, there’s a difference between full-blown redistribution and taking care of the poor (so-called min-max preferences). I agree taking care of the poor is an important policy goal (I even volunteer my time and donate to charity and stuff), but its not the only policy goal.
November 6, 2008 at 5:12 pm
silbey
Silbey, you can’t have 100% weight on the no starving norm. This would mean you’re indifferent between the status quo and a policy where I get all the world’s output but only allocate enough to everyone else to allow them to barely scratch by.
In the middle of a depression, with 30%+ employment, I think that (without taking it to the extremes you just posited) we can worry about the starving people on the streets and be less concerned with maximizing the abolute efficiency of it all. This is known as the “house on fire” argument. If my house is on fire, I’d prefer if you didn’t caution against the use of a garden hose because it’s not the most efficient use of the water and the hose. Well, no shit, Sherlock, but my house is on fire.
Silbey is obviously one of those “redistributionists”….
I’m a professor; you know we’re ALL left-wing radicals.
November 6, 2008 at 5:28 pm
TF Smith
The WSJ editorial page is not known for its dedication to intellectual honesty. The paper’s name is such for a reason.
I doubt the WSJ would publish a rebuttal from Eric, but the Bee might; and McClatchy (or whatever chain they are now part of; I’ve lost track of the M&A) could take it national.
Just a thought.
November 6, 2008 at 5:40 pm
pushmedia1
Professor S, ok, but there’s that concession again that some New Deal policies prolonged the depression.
The house on fire analogy isn’t perfect because you’re not considering any trade-offs. The only policy concern is to get the fire out. When we assess the performance of policy in the great depression, we’re weighing efficiency concerns against concerns about economic depravity.
That said, how much of the economic depravity, precipitating inefficient (but necessary) policy, was itself caused by bad policy and how much was caused by the inefficiencies exposed by the bursting market bubble? That’s a hard question to answer specifically, but it has be a little bit of both. In any case, I’m willing to blame Hoover for all of that original bad policy. Roosevelt prolonged the pain, but there’s an argument for the necessity of his policies even if they were inefficient.
November 6, 2008 at 5:49 pm
silbey
The house on fire analogy isn’t perfect because you’re not considering any trade-offs. .
“The water from the hose will destroy some of my possessions.”
Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best.
some New Deal policies prolonged the depression.
I don’t know that it did, but again we’re in an analogous situation to extreme medical treatment. You may have to save a life at the cost of side effects extending down the road.
Note that 1) you’re making an argument that the WSJ did not and 2) the essence of your argument–the anti-Depression policies may have had some negative effects–is not being argued against by anyone.
November 6, 2008 at 6:19 pm
pushmedia1
Hey, I like to hear (see) myself talk (type). Truly, though, an argument like I’m making is common from economists and an argument like the WSJ’s follows from it. The narrative of Hoover’s neglect and Roosevelt’s rescue just doesn’t fly when you consider all the economic intervention Hoover actually did and the fact that on some dimensions (e.g. efficiency) Roosevelt made things worse.
For the record, I’m not against intervention: money policy is important and it should have been better. To the extent policy makers can identify bubbles (which probably isn’t that great of an extent) they should try to pop them. Hoover did the opposite of these things and he made things worse by signing Smoot-Hawley. Roosevelt could have inflated wages lower, faster. Negative income taxes might have been better than make-work programs, but Roosevelt can’t be blamed for not implementing an idea that wouldn’t be formulated for a couple decades. Hoover gets most of the blame because he implemented policies that economists knew at the time to be bad (tariffs). Roosevelt implemented bad policy, but we only know they are bad because the experience of the depression.
I guess if you’re preferred narrative is Hoover=bad, Roosevelt==good, then fine. But I don’t think the WSJ’s opinion piece is arguing against that point of view. Its point is that Hoover wasn’t a lazy fairy so the lesson from the depression for today can’t be that markets are bad and regulation is good.
November 6, 2008 at 6:57 pm
bitchphd
This is not a legitimate public history web site?
We didn’t want to tell you.
November 6, 2008 at 7:39 pm
eric
Saying that FDR’s policies prolonged the Depression entails an unspecified counterfactual: as opposed to what? Continuing Hoover’s policies? No. FDR was better than Hoover. Considered against an ideal New Deal — say, without the NRA — okay. But that’s an argument for a better New Deal, not for no New Deal.
November 6, 2008 at 8:05 pm
eric
I’m not against intervention: money policy is important and it should have been better
To be clearer, the Fed’s policy is the bit of government policy that is usually agreed to have caused and prolonged the Depression—as against Roosevelt’s monetary policy, which is often (see Romer) credited with reversing it. Again, the switch from Hoover to Roosevelt mattered, with the advantage going to Roosevelt.
The narrative of Hoover’s neglect and Roosevelt’s rescue just doesn’t fly
It flies dandy when applied to the banking crisis and monetary policy.
pushmedia1, you’ve said a number of things that aren’t right: that the WSJ was writing about nonfarm policy, that the tariff was nonfarm policy, that Ba476 is the usual series for reporting unemployment, that Ba476 is civilian nonfarm employment, etc.
I’m going to be charitable and assume that this is because you’ve written before you’ve thought carefully about what you wanted to say, and I’m not going to assume you’re ignorant or lying.
But the Daniel Davies dictum applies here: good arguments don’t need lots of untrue things said about them.
Please stop.
November 6, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Adam A
Eric:
Could you explain why the NRA was bad? My understanding is that it was about maximum work hours, banning child labor, setting up a minimum wage, and improving conditions for unions. I ask because many of those things seem like the bedrock of liberalism. In addition, my grandmother was a worker in a shoe factory at the time, and her view was that that was the time when things started getting better in the factory. That’s not to say that the factory owner didn’t still make life horrible for them (punching out people time cards, but not letting them go home), but it was the beginning of make things better.
November 6, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Adam A
Eric:
One more thing: I would encourage to you to continue your clarification of Roosevelt’s record. It is essentially “common knowledge” now, even among liberals my age that the New Deal was counterproductive.
November 6, 2008 at 9:31 pm
silbey
an argument like the WSJ’s follows from it
Except the argument that the WSJ is making is that all government intervention is bad. And it’s not doing it from some sense of historical fairness so as to rehabilitate Hoover’s memory. It’s doing it for very distinct present-day partisan concerns. Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical about it.
I guess if you’re preferred narrative is Hoover=bad, Roosevelt==good, then fine
I made that argument nowhere in this thread, and would be embarrassed if I had. One of the great flaws of Internet discussions is the tendency of people to flatten other people’s positions, to rob them of their dimensions. You shouldn’t encourage that weakness.
November 6, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Walt
This is the first time I remember seeing silbey get mad on a thread.
To be fair to pushmedia, this is clearly an argument he wants to have, and the WSJ editorial just provided a convenient excuse. To be unfair, how naive do you have to be to not realize that the sole purpose of the WSJ editorial page is to push a narrow ideological agenda?
November 6, 2008 at 10:17 pm
eric
Could you explain why the NRA was bad? My understanding is that it was about maximum work hours, banning child labor, setting up a minimum wage, and improving conditions for unions.
Right, and all those things survived NRA—in the Wagner Act and Fair Labor Standards Act (which, I’m sure, are economically inefficient).
But NRA generally gets low marks. Why? Well, for one thing, it tried to do everything at once—raise both prices and wages. Which even if it had succeeded at doing, would have been a failure at promoting recovery, right?
Second, it didn’t succeed. Its method was to create government-sponsored cartels, with management, labor, consumer’s rep, and government rep all at one table, for all companies in an industry. (So it suspended antitrust law.) I suppose in theory something like this could work—I don’t know enough about Japanese or German capitalism, but I gather they operate something like this—but the story you usually get in the NRA case is, the cartels were dominated either by one big player, or by a band of smaller players using the arrangement to gang up on bigger competitors (which is what happened in the chicken industry, hence the Schechter case); there were rarely labor reps and even more rarely consumer reps. Government reps tended to be men who’d recently been in the business. So they tended to give the advantage in industry codes to the dominant players in the code-making bodies.
Which in turn rarely got around to enforcing codes anyway; the thing only got up and running by summer 1933 and was in a shambles by early 1934, tasked with investigating itself (never a good sign) subject to a critical inspectors’ report, and unpopular with Congress and its constituencies even before the Court struck it down in 1935.
The standard narrative on NRA is Ellis Hawley, New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, but a very good supplement and corrective is Meg Jacobs’s book.
November 6, 2008 at 10:22 pm
eric
It is essentially “common knowledge” now, even among liberals my age that the New Deal was counterproductive.
Oh, but surely this depends on some highly selective definition of “the New Deal,” right? Seriously, these days especially, who doesn’t think the FDIC or the Fed, which as it now exists is a creation of the banking acts of 1933 and 1935, are on balance good things? Even the SEC is on balance a good thing, even though it’s been napping or not given an adequate brief in recent years.
Again, these days especially, who doesn’t think Social Security—which, remember, included not only old-age pensions, but unemployment insurance—is a good thing? Do you really think privatized old-age pensions would have been marvelous in the past year or so? Do you really think we’d be better off without national public unemployment insurance? Remember, that was one of the ways the banks got hit in the Depression—people go out of work, they pull their savings out of banks, because they have no unemployment insurance….
Which is not even to mention the TVA and the PWA. You can say that eventually the South would have modernized on its own, but you know, it had had an awfully long time already, and was still mired in economic backwardness. A little electricity was a good thing, there.
November 6, 2008 at 10:28 pm
urbino
Sorry, but I have to back up a bit and catch this:
Odds on the relative probability of a major paper asking Eric to do an op-ed vs. a woman falling out of the sky onto Ben’s lap? Anyone?
How does relativity come into it, b? Is Ben’s lap unusually massive?
What about the odds of Eric reading a paper while sitting in Ben’s lap? Anyone?
November 6, 2008 at 10:59 pm
The Ambrosini Critique » Blog Archive » Lesson from the Great Depression?
[…] lesson from the depression is not that intervention is good thing and laissez-faire is a bad thing. This guy’s love for all things Roosevelt blinds him to this simple […]
November 6, 2008 at 11:22 pm
pushmedia1
>Except the argument that the WSJ is making is that all government intervention is bad.
We’ll have to respectfully disagree on this point. The opinion’s subtitle is “Herbert Hoover was no proponent of laissez-faire” not “All of Hoover’s interventions were bad.” Also, there’s a whole section about how Hoover *didn’t* intervene to increase interest rates. I agree we tend to flatten arguments on the intertubes. All of us.
November 6, 2008 at 11:36 pm
bitchphd
How does relativity come into it, b?
Aren’t you just the little smartass.
November 6, 2008 at 11:37 pm
urbino
Usually.
November 6, 2008 at 11:56 pm
eric
This guy’s love for all things Roosevelt blinds him
Aw, and I’d just given you the benefit of the doubt. But apparently you’re bent on joining the fibbers. In a thread where I’ve explained at length the shortcomings of the New Deal, you’re going with “love for all things Roosevelt”?
Please go away, and don’t come back.
November 7, 2008 at 12:01 am
Michael Turner
Maybe this is hair-splitting, but I’d write that as “in Andrew Wilson’s WSJ opinion [emph. mine] piece, “Five Myths about the Great Depression,” we find stated as fact….”
One of the nice things about a good print newspaper cf. a news website is that you can open up a newspaper to a part clearly marked as the op-ed pages. It’s like opening a big bento box of what is obviously opinion, much of it clashing. On the paper’s website, however, your only early clue is the tag “opinion” taking up a tiny fraction of real estate, and almost apologetically at that.
In the case of the WSJ, not much clash in the opinions, I admit. But still.
To Tiny Hermaphrodite, regarding
yes, it is depressing, but just remember that most people who buy these sorts of books read them only until their lips get tired. I find this a very consoling thought, somehow.
November 7, 2008 at 12:05 am
eric
Fair enough, Michael. Everyone knows the WSJ op-ed page is at odds with much of the actual reporting of the paper.
November 7, 2008 at 12:10 am
ari
just remember that most people who buy these sorts of books read them only until their lips get tired
This made me laugh. But if I take your meaning — books written by conservatives typically find a conservative audience — I’m not sure I agree. Shlaes presents as a measured, thoughtful person; she’s no Rush or Coulter. Her book has been reviewed, often positively, everywhere. And it’s just not clear to me that most people know what a pernicious pile of crap it actually is. That said, reading books is a pre-9/11 activity. So none of this really matters.
November 7, 2008 at 12:24 am
Brad
And it’s just not clear to me that most people know what a pernicious pile of crap it actually is.
Some of us know, but then, some of us regularly read this website, so….
I did watch the Daily Show interview with her, and I knew a lot of what she said was, well, an oversimplification or wrong before reading more enlightened opinions on the matter. It is amazing to me how when I was in high school, we discussed how tariffs were the worst thing possible for the Great Depression but in the last 15 years (I flatter myself) this idea that all government policies are bad has become mainstream….
November 7, 2008 at 12:27 am
Ben Alpers
A little electricity was a good thing, there.
Just another sign of the insidious origins of the New Deal ;-)
November 7, 2008 at 12:27 am
Vance
Eric, I see you once appeared on Michael Krasny’s Forum — was that worth it? Worth some fraction of an op-ed? I think he’s sometimes quite good at letting people talk (haven’t listened to that, though).
November 7, 2008 at 5:57 am
Etl World News | Unemployment During the Great Depression
[…] Eric Rauchway says this a lie, a lie spread by conservatives to besmirch the sainted FDR. Nonsense. In 1938 the […]
November 7, 2008 at 7:02 am
eric
Oh, make it stop, Lord! the guy in the post above uses the old series, which is the one I explained got dropped, and then links to the post with the explanation, and ignores it! Why don’t people *read* anything?
November 7, 2008 at 7:07 am
eric
Oh, even more hilariously, that’s Alex Tabarrok’s post having automatically been copied to some spam blog. Why don’t people *read* anything?
November 7, 2008 at 7:13 am
silbey
This is the first time I remember seeing silbey get mad on a thread.
I’m not a grumpy old professor, but I play one on TV.
The opinion’s subtitle is “Herbert Hoover was no proponent of laissez-faire” not “All of Hoover’s interventions were bad.” Also, there’s a whole section about how Hoover *didn’t* intervene to increase interest rates
Again, you’re responding to an argument I *didn’t* make. Nowhere in my post did I mention Hoover.
Everyone of the WSJ’s myths is pointed in the direction of ‘government intervention bad’ Their thesis comes late in the piece, here:
” Enlightened government pulled the nation out of the worst downturn in its history and came to the rescue of capitalism through rigorous regulation and government oversight. To the contrary, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations — in disregarding market signals at every turn — were jointly responsible for turning a panic into the worst depression of modern times. As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental “pump priming,” almost one out of five workers remained unemployed. What the government gave with one hand, through increased spending, it took away with the other, through increased taxation. But that was not an even trade-off. As the root cause of a great deal of mismanagement and inefficiency, government was responsible for a lost decade of economic growth.
Hoover was destined to fill the role of the left’s designated scapegoat. Despite that, the one place where he and FDR truly “triumphed” was in enlisting the support of leading writers and intellectuals for government planning and intervention. This had a lasting effect on the way that generations of people think about the Great Depression. The antienterprise spirit among thought leaders of this time (and later) extended to top business publications. “Do you still believe in Lazy-Fairies?” Business Week asked derisively in 1931. “To plan or not to plan is no longer the question. The real question is who is to do it?”
Rough translation: the economy hit a small bad patch, which Hoover and FDR turned into the Great Depression through government intervention, then FDR subverted the intellectuals to protect himself.
First off, it’s the standard conservative groundwork laying for current policy debates, to add a veneer of historical support to a present-day position (cf Goldberg, _Liberal Fascism_). That it’s a severe distortion is irrelevant to the WSJ.
Second, it touches on all the current day pernicious talking points. I loved how it slid in the ‘evil academics’ meme there.
It’s a dishonest piece aimed for partisan consumption.
November 7, 2008 at 8:02 am
Ergonomic Slingshot
“Please go away, and don’t come back.”
This guy is patiently trying to educate you, you don’t understand him and are too arrogant to try, he gets frustrated and writes a post on his own blog, and you tell him go away and don’t come back? You’re a prince, Rauchway.
Tabarrok schools you here. I hope you don’t try to say untrue things about this very good argument.
November 7, 2008 at 8:07 am
eric
I suppose you’ve noticed that Tabarrok is wrong.
November 7, 2008 at 9:00 am
Ergonomic Slingshot
I haven’t noticed how your post is responsive.
November 7, 2008 at 9:00 am
Please read before posting. « The Edge of the American West
[…] 7, 2008 in history and current events | by eric Alex Tabarrok reads my post on unemployment and says “nonsense.” Then he quotes Historical Statistics of the United […]
November 7, 2008 at 10:14 am
EconTech » Unemployment During the Depression
[…] Eric Rauchway says this is a lie, a lie spread by conservatives to besmirch the sainted FDR. Nonsense. In 1938 the unemployment rate […]
November 7, 2008 at 10:35 am
Student
On getting an op-ed published. From the experience of friends who have had op-eds published in the NYT and Wash Post, from time to time the editors accept unsolicited pieces. As your topic would be highly timely, it would be worth writing to the editors and sending some sort of a draft or outline.
November 7, 2008 at 10:46 am
Tiny Hermaphrodite
First off, it’s the standard conservative groundwork laying for current policy debates, to add a veneer of historical support to a present-day position (cf Goldberg, _Liberal Fascism_)
Guess which book is “frequently bought together with” Shlaes’ book on amazon. I mean apart from Glenn Becks “An Inconvienient Book”.
November 7, 2008 at 11:07 am
Jacob Christensen › links for 2008-11-07
[…] Stop lying about Roosevelt’s record. « The Edge of the American West (tags: economics history usa politics) […]
November 7, 2008 at 11:37 am
silbey
Guess which book is “frequently bought together with” Shlaes’ book on amazon
He shoots, he scores!
November 7, 2008 at 1:26 pm
ehstudent
Eric,
I’m curious what you think of this explanation: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0876.pdf
November 7, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Kansas City Oracle
I have not read this site previously, but I assume Eric is a liberal partisan?
Reasonable people can disagree over whether people on work relief programs should be considered unemployed, but the fact that the WSJ used the official department of labor unemployment rates and it is grossly unfair to call them a liar or even to criticize them without plainly revealing the facts regarding the disagreement.
I actually think the WSJ approach makes more sense because the issue the effect of the New Deal on the private economy, so why should people in work relief jobs be considered employed?
November 7, 2008 at 5:40 pm
sfokc6125
Under the Constitution The vote was illegal .
Article. II. – The Executive Branch
The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted.
This never happened. The votes were not transported and count in the this manner. The election was not Constitutional and the winners or losers were not leagal or right.
Anyone taking the oath of office at this point will be committing Treason against the American People and the Constitution.
November 7, 2008 at 5:41 pm
ari
Um…huh?
November 7, 2008 at 5:43 pm
eric
KC Oracle, please have a look here and here.
November 7, 2008 at 5:47 pm
wgreen
You all might want to check this out:
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=4013
November 7, 2008 at 5:47 pm
eric
Um…huh?
Well, it’s not Dave Noon-level spam, but I try.
November 7, 2008 at 5:50 pm
wgreen
Sorry,
Something funky happened with my post.
Here’s the link:
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=4013
November 7, 2008 at 5:54 pm
ari
If the Mackinac Center is located on Mackinac Island, I’d do just about anything to become a fellow. For the fudge. Yum.
November 7, 2008 at 6:16 pm
yourmortgageplanner
It’s hard to talk to someone about economics if they know nothing of economics. If you take the time to evaluate the New Deal and Roosevelt, one would understand the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.
The following are excerpts from an article I read during my undergrad economic studies in 2003
“Democratic presidential candidates as well as some conservative intellectuals, are suggesting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal is a good model for government policy today.
Mounting evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists — including two Nobel Prize winners — at Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the University of California (Berkeley) and University of Chicago, among other universities.”
***“What about the good supposedly done by New Deal spending programs? These didn’t increase the number of jobs in the economy, because the money spent on New Deal projects came from taxpayers who consequently had less money to spend on food, coats, cars, books and other things that would have stimulated the economy. This is a classic case of the seen versus the unseen — we can see the jobs created by New Deal spending, but we cannot see jobs destroyed by New Deal taxing.”
“New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring.”
“Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people – blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) cut back farm production and devastated black tenant farmers who needed work. The National Labor Relations Act (1935) gave unions monopoly bargaining power in workplaces and led to violent strikes and compulsory unionization of mass production industries. Unions secured above-market wages, triggering big layoffs and helping to usher in the depression of 1938.
For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political “swing” states in the West and East – where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn’t see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side.”
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3357
November 7, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Ben Alpers
Have you read eric’s posts on these topics, yourmortgageplanner?
Nobody denies that people write articles that argue these things. The articles however are wrong. FWIW, the article you quote is by Jim Powell, who doesn’t even claim to be an economist, but rather “an expert in the history of liberty.”
Simply cutting and pasting the bad arguments that eric has already responded to is really not in any way advancing the argument…except insofar as the “argument” at this point is largely sustained by argumentum ad verecundiam and you’ve provided yet another tiresome example of it.
November 7, 2008 at 6:24 pm
urbino
It’s hard to talk to someone about economics if they know nothing of economics.
This, I think, is something we can all agree on.
November 7, 2008 at 9:19 pm
ScentOfViolets
Here’s an interestin’ little incident; I posted a comment on Tabarrok’s blog asking if we could all at least agree that he should come clean and admit that Eric’s complaints against the the WSJ had merit. I also asked if we could at least agree that if someone is wrong, they should have the grace to issue a retraction.
Something I didn’t see coming: Apparently Alex deleted the comment.
What a prince Alex. Doesn’t stop you from being wrong, and it doesn’t make you look any better.
November 7, 2008 at 9:27 pm
ari
If you take the time to evaluate the New Deal and Roosevelt, one would understand the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.
Mein gott! They really are the same people as the neo-Confederates. Or at least it’s the same rhetoric: “if you take the time to…then you’ll agree with me.” Hey! Blowhards! We’ve taken the time! We still disagree! If you want to convince us we’re wrong, address our arguments directly and with evidence that isn’t of dubious merit.
November 7, 2008 at 10:08 pm
silbey
The following are excerpts from an article I read during my undergrad economic studies in 2003
It’s really beyond parody at this point.
The rough translation of the above is “I read in a fortune cookie that…”
(And that was the most intelligent of the comments…”I have not read this site previously, but I assume Eric is a liberal partisan?” Eek!)
The Ron Paul folks at least could string a sentence together without shooting themselves repeatedly in the foot.
Well, okay, maybe not, but God Almighty…
November 8, 2008 at 3:26 am
mcclaud
Not to ruin the great debate you are having, but to defend a COMEDIAN having someone on their show –
John Stewart, while writing the jokes and other parts of his show, is not always in charge of who gets to a guest on his show. I’m sure he had an opening, and was told, “This lady has a controversial book that could get some people watching etc.”
And like … Russel? Yeah, Russel remarked, you could tell he wasn’t serious about her book or her ideas. I think he was on the verge of mocking her, but couldn’t bring himself to do it out of pity.
Now, I return you to your regularly scheduled debate about the New Deal, because that kid who said the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression in such an erroneously and humorously fashion really deserves some more factual discourse from intelligent people.
And lolz on the Ron Paul remark, because that was seriously funny.
November 8, 2008 at 7:51 am
Ahmnodt Heare
The reason why the Depression lasted as long as it did is because of government intervention. We are heading into another depression because we have elected an attorney to try to fix the economy. (NOTE: Electing a Naval officer would not have been any better.)
November 8, 2008 at 8:32 am
silbey
The reason why the Depression lasted as long as it did is because of government intervention. We are heading into another depression because we have elected an attorney to try to fix the economy
Lather, rinse, repeat.
November 8, 2008 at 9:22 am
Ben Alpers
We are heading into another depression because we have elected an attorney to try to fix the economy. (NOTE: Electing a Naval officer would not have been any better.)
So this is why the story of the American economy from 1776 to the present is one of unending failure: we’ve never elected an economist as president!
Just think how much better off we’d all be if Alan Greenspan or Uncle Miltie had been president (I’m guessing that Ahmnodt Heare doesn’t have Amartya Sen or James Galbraith in mind…)
November 8, 2008 at 9:30 am
Michael Turner
We almost had an economist as president if you count an MBA as an econ degree. Well, OK, maybe that’s not the most persuasive example.
November 8, 2008 at 9:50 am
AWC
On the contrary, Silbey, the parody began with the WSJ article itself. The author celebrates Calvin Coolidge. CALVIN COOLIDGE!!! Oh, how I dream that the GOP listens to this great thinker’s advice and tries to redeem Silent Cal.
November 8, 2008 at 9:57 am
JPool
To ari’s comment on the, “if you’ll only take the time to consider the evidence” rhetoric, a nice reductio ad even more absurdum of this dynamic is Jon Ronson’s account of 7/7 denialists in the UK (found in the Act One of ,a href=”http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=338″>this show).
November 8, 2008 at 9:58 am
JPool
Stupid shift button.
November 8, 2008 at 10:29 am
Rich Puchalsky
Will no one defend Silent Cal? As he is the favorite son — well, actually, the least-favorite son — of my home town of Northampton, MA, I suppose I’ll have to give it a try. He wasn’t all bad. Quoting Wikipedia for convenience:
“Although some commentators have criticized Coolidge as a doctrinaire laissez-faire ideologue, historian Robert Sobel offers some context based on Coolidge’s sense of federalism: ‘As Governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge supported wages and hours legislation, opposed child labor, imposed economic controls during World War I, favored safety measures in factories, and even worker representation on corporate boards. Did he support these measures while president? No, because in the 1920s, such matters were considered the responsibilities of state and local governments.'”
I don’t think that he’s really comparable to any of the GOP Presidents from Nixon on. Not a thinker, but not actively evil.
November 8, 2008 at 11:05 am
AWC
The author of the op-ed is not seeking to celebrate Coolidge’s record as governor of Massachusetts, save perhaps his union-busting. He wants to memorialize his do-nothing, pro-business time as president.
“In the 1920s, such matters were considered the responsibilities of state and local governments.”
Ah, the beauties of the passive voice. Coolidge believed this, but most Americans did not, as evidenced by Congress’ repeated passage of federal child labor laws (always voided by the USSC). The best thing to be said about Coolidge was his appointment of Harlan Fiske Stone to the court.
November 8, 2008 at 11:08 am
Ben Alpers
The best thing to be said about Coolidge was his appointment of Harlan Fiske Stone to the court.
I don’t agree, awc.
What about his decision not to seek reelection?
November 8, 2008 at 11:16 am
silbey
“On the contrary, Silbey, the parody began with the WSJ article itself.”
Thus my phrasing: “beyond parody.”
November 8, 2008 at 11:26 am
AWC
O.k. o.k., David. I should have left you out of my post.
My point is that we’ve gone from the absurdity of correcting an unknown former editor of _Business Week_ writing on the famously fair pages of Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ to refuting the blog comments of random Cato ideologues. Somehow, I feel our talents are being wasted.
But then, Shlaes, Tabarrok, and McArdle provoked us.
November 8, 2008 at 12:07 pm
silbey
Somehow, I feel our talents are being wasted.
Yep. The noise machine makes you waste time dealing with the Swift Boaters while the the big fish sail past. Eric should focus on the top level posts and we’ll continue to mock the commenters.
November 8, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Brian
it’s too bad that eric isn’t honest enough to use the same measure of unemployment for all presidents.
November 8, 2008 at 3:52 pm
silbey
it’s too bad that eric isn’t honest enough to use the same measure of unemployment for all presidents.
You haven’t really read any of the posts, have you?
November 8, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Tristan Phillips
Another dishonest historian looking to push his agenda.
If you want to use your “counting” method, use it for all periods, not just the ones that paint your beloved socialist FDR. At least you’re willing to put your dishonesty out for everyone to find.
November 8, 2008 at 4:22 pm
dana
I’m amused to think that eric is part of an epidemic.
November 8, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Mark
World War 2 brought us out of the Great Depression, not FDR’s New Deal.
His policies only made the economy worse as we will see with the Obama Depression.
And why is FDR so great?
He put hundred of thousands of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.
November 8, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Sifu Tweety Fish
This is neat, it’s like a record skipping.
November 8, 2008 at 4:59 pm
silbey
Fascinating sociological experiment going on here: the Ron Paul-bots came in and wrote long, impassioned discourses. The FDR is a socialist-bots go for the one liners.
November 8, 2008 at 5:41 pm
eric
eric isn’t honest enough to use the same measure of unemployment for all presidents
This is not true. The series I cite as preferred is the series you’ll find in Historical Statistics of the United States providing an unemployment rate for 1890-1990. I’d cite it for any year in that period.
November 8, 2008 at 6:06 pm
urbino
Remember that colorful trope that Tony Snow used in one of his earliest pressers? The one about the petroleum-based infant?
Ding ding ding.
November 8, 2008 at 6:07 pm
eric
the petroleum-based infant
What would Joel Chandler Harris say, I wonder.
November 8, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Ben Alpers
What would Joel Chandler Harris say, I wonder.
“Zippedy doo dah,” presumably.
November 8, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Ben Alpers
One thing that I have been wondering throughout this “discussion”: all the Paultards and libertarians have been arguing that it was really World War II that got us out of the Great Depression. But a lot of these folks hate U.S. involvement in World War II almost as much as they hate the New Deal. Why have they been so silent about the socialist atrocity that was Dr. Win-the-War?
I suppose that they can’t rationally claim that the US economy hadn’t recovered by the end of the War. And, since we’re discussing the Great Depression, why attack the Good War if you don’t have to?
I’m also surprised we haven’t heard more about the gold standard and how that old Communist (or Liberal Fascist or whatever they think he is now) Rosenfeld messed that up, too!
November 8, 2008 at 6:44 pm
urbino
Probably, he would blame Lincoln.
November 8, 2008 at 6:47 pm
urbino
Why have they been so silent about the socialist atrocity that was Dr. Win-the-War?
Pwned!, Alpers.
November 8, 2008 at 6:56 pm
matt w
So this is why the story of the American economy from 1776 to the present is one of unending failure: we’ve never elected an economist as president!
And the only one who ever made a serious run was Phil Gramm, right? If we’d elected Gramm everything would be great.
I also fully support Rich’s claim of Coolidge for Massachusetts, thus getting him off Vermont’s books. It’s bad enough that my original state has only ever produced the Worst President Ever.
November 8, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Colin
There you go, Ben. Screw stimulus, we need some real central planning.
Trouble is, instead of commanding heights we’re getting a bunch of clapped-out banks and maybe even, woohoo, a couple of bankrupt car makers.
November 8, 2008 at 7:29 pm
silbey
really World War II that got us out of the Great Depression
Which is also entertaining because if ever the U.S. economy was centrally-planned, it was during WWII.
November 8, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Rich Puchalsky
Can’t help claiming him, since my innocuous local library is saddled with his stuff. Literally: they have the saddle of a sort of mechanical horse early exercise machine that he rode in.
Too bad AWC shot down my Coolidge defense. I can’t think of anything else. (Although his decision not to run for another term when he would have been almost sure to win has to count for something.)
All right, how about the Coolidge Effect? It’s not many Presidents that have an effect named after them.
November 9, 2008 at 9:57 am
The Next Time Somebody Tells You America Is A “Center-Right Country”… « Mercury Rising 鳯女
[…] media allies are busy using the “America is a center-right country” theme (along with lies about Roosevelt’s record and the New Deal) to try and cow the Democrats from acting on their renewed mandate. But as the data show, the Cons […]
November 9, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Jaime
I’m sure you are protesting the unemployment rate under FDR, which seems strange because that is something which can be proven by data. The truth is that he started off with a high unemployment rate and was able to reduce it down to about 14% with his government employment programs. But it didn’t stay that low for long before it drifted back up close to original levels. Fortunately WWII was able to get employment down to 9% in 1941 and then eventually less than 2%.
So to say that FDR’s policies were effective at reducing unemployment is debatable. They sort of did, but the war was better.
November 9, 2008 at 5:21 pm
eric
something which can be proven by data
Nobody’s arguing that unemployment didn’t fall to pre-crash levels till the war. The question is rather one of which data you use to discuss the New Deal and how you characterize it.
November 9, 2008 at 6:04 pm
matt w
The truth is that he started off with a high unemployment rate and was able to reduce it down to about 14% with his government employment programs…. So to say that FDR’s policies were effective at reducing unemployment is debatable. They sort of did, but the war was better.
The commenter Charlie on Alex Tabarrok’s post (can’t link individual comments, sorry) had a nice summary of this:
Things were really bad when FDR took over. After 8 years things were still not good, but a whole lot better.
I’d add that to say FDR’s policies “sort of” reduced unemployment is not accurate. On the take 3 graph in the original post, we see that, no matter which series you use, the reduction from the worst point to the best point before the 1938 recession was greater than the total unemployment rate today. In fact, it was at least almost equal to the reduction it took to get to that 2% unemployment level. So it seems that FDR’s policies were as good at reducing unemployment as the war was. It’s just that Hoover had dug the hole so deep that it took both those things to get us all the way out.
November 10, 2008 at 6:59 am
“Deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.” « The Edge of the American West
[…] 1, 2, 3, 4, […]
November 10, 2008 at 10:34 am
Monday Morning News Roundup « Mercury Rising 鳯女
[…] – Dear conservatives: Stop lying about Roosevelt’s record. […]
November 10, 2008 at 10:38 am
Stimulus « Yes, Let’s Talk About This
[…] to push the country out of the Great Depression. On one side is Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and Eric Rauchway who argue, essentially, that the New Deal did in fact buoy the economy, and that World War […]
November 10, 2008 at 12:57 pm
mcclaud
I have to echo about how interesting it is that suddenly some socialist economic policy is considered “heresy” or “Communism” when – during WWII – we used a lot of socialistic policy to unite the States. Victory gardens, an increase in government employment, an expansion of welfare – all those things are socialism in essence and used during WWII. Some of that was established by the New Deal, as well.
Pure capitalism does not work. As I’ve stated several times in my own blog, it’s a combination of economic ideologies that make a sound economy. I mean, government regulation, mandatory oversight, and shared growth are not capitalist ideas – they are by in large socialist policies.
November 10, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Ahmnodt Heare
Ben Alpers
We are heading into another depression because we have elected an attorney to try to fix the economy. (NOTE: Electing a Naval officer would not have been any better.)
So this is why the story of the American economy from 1776 to the present is one of unending failure: we’ve never elected an economist as president!
Just think how much better off we’d all be if Alan Greenspan or Uncle Miltie had been president (I’m guessing that Ahmnodt Heare doesn’t have Amartya Sen or James Galbraith in mind…)
I would have voted for Uncle Miltie :)
November 10, 2008 at 5:48 pm
eric
Of course, “Uncle Miltie” thought the Depression, or at least the banking crisis that contributed mightily to the Depression, was caused in part by the government’s failure to intervene.
November 11, 2008 at 1:54 am
President Sarah Palin
Wasn’t Rose Velt a Jewish communist?
Now that this Obama has won the elections by fraud we have to wait 4 more years but then with God’s help I will be president and correct all the bad things Obama will do to our race!
November 11, 2008 at 7:42 am
Grande debates da Blogosfera: O New Deal | Na Prática a Teoria é Outra
[…] Rauchway: Para de mentir, mané neoliberalzaço. Esse número de 20% você tirou da cartola contando como desempregados os […]
November 17, 2008 at 6:34 am
New Deal economics - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
[…] Rauchway is all over this. Basically, the anti-FDR argument on the data is based on (a) considering people employed by the […]
November 19, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Amity Shlaes strikes again - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
[…] you hear claims that the New Deal made the depression worse, they often come directly or indirectly from the work […]
November 20, 2008 at 12:19 am
Amity Shlaes Is Lying About Roosevelt, The New Deal, And the Great Depression | Oliver Willis
[…] a lot! Detail here. […]
November 20, 2008 at 6:05 am
Masson’s Blog - A Citizen’s Guide to Indiana » New Deal Revisionism
[…] Deal Revisionism By Doug Conservatives hated Roosevelt and the New Deal. Watch out for revisionist myths as we enter an era that seems to rhyme with, if not repeat, some of the Depression-era […]
November 20, 2008 at 9:56 am
economics: Amity Shlaes (B. Eng) v Paul Krugman (PhD Economics from MIT, Nobel Prize in Economics) « The Brittle Hum of the Republic
[…] you hear claims that the New Deal made the depression worse, they often come directly or indirectly from the work […]
November 20, 2008 at 6:57 pm
clarky07
where did you get your unemployment figures from. they don’t agree with any figures i can find on the internet, including wikipedia.
November 20, 2008 at 7:17 pm
eric
The current edition of Historical Statistics of the United States. If you follow the link where it says “Readers of this site” etc. you’ll see further discussion.
November 20, 2008 at 11:43 pm
locutus
The right will never stop lying about the New Deal. They have no other choice. To tell the truth would be to admit defeat.
November 25, 2008 at 6:56 pm
A New New Deal
[…] acknowledge that the first New Deal didn’t work?” But as Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, and others explain, the New Deal did in fact work for Americans. Where the New Deal had shortcomings, they were the […]
December 4, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Krugman et la Grande Dépression « Rationalité Limitée
[…] que ce même New Deal aurait contribué à renforcer la dépression, comme cela est défendu par certains. Récemment, Krugman s’en est pris de manière véhémente à la pauvre Amity Shlaes au sujet […]
December 4, 2008 at 4:40 pm
noodleguy
Good FSM, another person defending FDR.
Listen, there is at least one policy of his which I feel never can be reconciled with the view of FDR as a “hero”
At a time when many Americans were literally starving he ordered the slaughter of thousands of livestock and the plowing down of many acres of farmland. In return for destroying their own work he payed farmers lower than market prices.
Here’s the other thing, actually: He played utter party nepotism. Meaning that the contracts for those public works projects that everyone seems to love almost all went members from…guess which party.
Mind you, I’m a liberal who supported Obama this election. So don’t go on some witch hunt accusing me of conservative bias, thank you very much. I’ve seen the facts about FDR and he was not a nice person, and he was not helpful to the US economy.
December 11, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Good Example « PowerUp
[…] problem, of course, is that the primary assertion of the quote is completely false. During the time period when FDR implemented his fiscal stimulus policies, unemployment dropped and […]
December 24, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Did FDR's policies help us get out of the Great Depression? - Page 3 - US Message Board
[…] Online: Krugman defends FDR Stop lying about Roosevelt’s record. The Edge of the American West (Very) short reading list: unemployment in the 1930s. The Edge of the American West […]
January 24, 2009 at 11:31 am
did fdr’s new deal worsen the great depression? « jesse merle
[…] of History Eric Rauchway shows that unemployment decreased quite significantly following FDR’s New Deal programs. […]
February 2, 2009 at 9:03 am
The pony chokers. « The Edge of the American West
[…] away than they order up another load and start shoveling it into that poor pony’s stall. Clear away the misconceptions and you find that under the New Deal, GDP was up, unemployment was down, productivity was up. […]
February 2, 2009 at 2:35 pm
New Deal Denialists and Blogroll Amnesty Day « Liberty Street
[…] away than they order up another load and start shoveling it into that poor pony’s stall. Clear away the misconceptions and you find that under the New Deal, GDP was up, unemployment was down, productivity was up. […]
February 12, 2009 at 11:41 am
Eye on Williamson » Another misleading GOP talking point on the New Deal
[…] to say that the New Deal made the Great Depression longer than it should have been. Debunked here, here, and here. Utterly culminating in this ignorant comment of GOP Rep. Steve Austria yesterday that […]