Another Rightwing Lie: FDR Didn't Get US out of the Depression, WW2 Did

FDR did stop the Depression. It began in 1929 and was mostly fixed by 1934. The economy became stronger in 1935 and 1936, and only experienced a mini-depression in 1937 because FDR listened to the Republicans. He stopped listening to them in 1938, and the economy got back on track. Pearl Harbor didn’t happen until Dec 1941. The US Depression was well over by that time. FDR got out of the Depression the same way most every sane government always does – through Keynesian economics – massive deficit spending and even public works projects. While we are on the subject of Nazi economics, I will say that some of the aspects of Nazi economics were admirable. The Nazis inherited a horrible Depression, like FDR did. They got out of it the same reasonable way he did – massive Keynesian deficit spending and public works projects. Unemployment was staggering when the Nazis took over. Within a few years, Germany had full employment. This is all good, but many other things they did were bad. Anyway, Nazi economics is irrelevant to Nazism. Their claim to fame rests on their:

  1. Racism
  2. Eugenics program
  3. Censorship
  4. Concentration camps
  5. Repression of dissidents
  6. Racial mass murder
  7. Killings of the physically and mentally unfit
  8. Extreme militarism
  9. Attacks on the surrounding states in order to conquer them to turn them into vassals of imperialist Nazi Germany, where they also committed racial mass murder and repression.

Nazis economics is not important. It’s not relevant whether they were capitalist or socialist or whatever or this or that. That they were capitalist or socialist or some weird thing in between has nothing to do with 1-9 above. They weren’t killing and repressing people in the name of some poltico-economic project. Nazis barely cared about economics. All they cared about was militarism, ultranationalism and racism. It’s true though that the Nazi economic project in the 1930’s was very successful. In some ways, it did resemble a standard liberal Keynesian project, and it was similar to the New Deal in a lot of ways. Germany climbed out of the Depression faster than any other nation due to this Left economic project. Good for them. In 1936, the rightwing media and the Republican Party had been on a jihad for four whole years nonstop against FDR the socialist/Communist bringing Communism to America. FDR was probably one of the most hated men in America among the wealthy US elite. By 1936, they had bombarded the American people with enough lies and crap about “excessive government spending” and an “out of control budget deficit” that the propaganda was starting to work. There was no excessive government spending. What there was was necessary to get us of out of the Depression, and it worked like it usually does. There was no problem with a budget deficit. Compared to nowadays, things were fine on that front. But the American people, suckers then like they are today, fell for the bait. They were aroused into a frenzy over the need for deficit reduction. FDR and the Democrats warned them that deficit reduction in a hazy economy would be a bad idea and would hurt the economy. They were right. FDR fell for it and enacted deficit reduction and heavy cuts in government spending. Predictably, that resulted in a mini-recession in 1937 as GDP declined by 3. Republicans didn’t make sense then, and they don’t make sense now. I don’t think they’ve ever made sense. Deficit spending and public works projects work. There’s no better way to get out of a Depression or bring down high unemployment. There’s no better job creation engine on Earth than deficit spending and public works projects. Works like a dream. I suppose Republicans ideologically do not want to believe this, because ideologically they are opposed to deficit spending to stimulate growth and public works projects. So to be consistent ideologically, they have to lie and say that stimulus-led growth and public works projects don’t work and all they do is ruin the economy and lead to Depressions and high unemployment, when in fact the truth is the opposite. Do Republicans ever tell the truth about anything? Ever?

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0 thoughts on “Another Rightwing Lie: FDR Didn't Get US out of the Depression, WW2 Did”

  1. Do you actually believe there is any real difference between Republican or Democrat?
    LaRouche did a good video presentation on FDR which he usually refers to measures against the economic collapse which he predicted would start in Greece then Ireland and other countries due to banking system long before it happened.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgcdRCWEt4Q
    What about the conspiracy theory that FDR allowed Pearl Harbour to happen and encouraged a Japanese assault with sanctions on Japan provoking the attack?

  2. The other day I was visiting my 97 year old dad in his swank Presbyterian rest home and we got to talking about FDR. He told me my grandfather on my mother’s side, who died in a cheap rooming house that he helped foot the bill for, loathed FDR and railed against him whenever he got a snootfull which was often because he’d been ruined and turned into a besotted melancholic by The Great Depression. I asked my dad if he’d been a New Dealer himself and told me he was never keen on Roosevelt, either. This was good news to me because after reading Thomas E. Mahl’s Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44
    http://www.amazon.com/Desperate-Deception-British-Operations-1939-44/dp/1574882236
    I decided (and why not, it’s a free country) that FDR ended the American republic. Fuck fighting for democracy! I want my godamn gold back!
    Suppose we’d lost that war. Would extremists like William Dudley Pelley and The Silvershirts have hunted Franklin and Elenor Roosevelt down, told them they had arrived to facilitate an escape to Antigua, shot them in the face at point blank range along with 15 cabinet members and then hung their naked bleeding bodies upside down from a lampost? I sincerely doubt it because Communists were the only type of partisans who got off on wicked shit like that.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnWmaRxFJ_A

  3. To Rob:
    o to be consistent ideologically, they have to lie and say that stimulus-led growth and public works projects don’t work and all they do is ruin the economy and lead to Depressions and high unemployment, when in fact the truth is the opposite.
    Some of FDR’s and Keynesian stimulus are brought up frequently in the current recession as excuses to continue free spending but the reality will end up much closer to Japan’s or worse Argentina’s experience in my opinion. The amount of debt per capita (and unfunded liabilities..) in the US dwarf what we had in the 30s.

  4. “Pearl Harbor didn’t happen until Dec 1941. The US Depression was well over by that time.”
    Well, weren’t we selling all kinds of arms and various supplies to the Allies during the lead up to Pearl Harbor? I think you’re a bit off base to say that the Depression wasn’t ended by the economics leading into and throughout the war.

  5. i don’t recall where i heard about it, but FDR was pretty much making shit up as he went along. he’d wake up in the morning and basically throw darts at a dartboard to determine his economic policy. i think this is something that i heard on NPR — This American Life, pretty much hardcore left wing people.

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