Monday, February 03, 2020

FDR re-considered

Noah Smith had some tweets over the weekend in which he discusses the comparisons that people like to imagine there would be between FDR and a Bernie Sanders presidency.  This included linking to an article in The Atlantic earlier this year that explained how FDR's policies were, in many cases, not "big government" ideologically driven, but combined pragmatic ways to get both government and the private sector involved.

I thought it very interesting:   

The New Deal Wasn’t What You Think

 It's worth clearing your browsing history to read!

2 comments:

Not Trampis said...

no comparison at all.
Capitalism isn't at its deathpoint.

If Roosevelt had have reduced real wages then the US recovery would have rivaled Germany's and been what other nations knew what had to been done

GMB said...

The Fed had buggered up their monetary policy. There wasn't much that could be done. FDR launched this hodge podge of policies that were never going to fix the problem, which was primarily monetary. But out of this hodge podge some really good ideas arose. So we ought to go back and find out which ideas were a waste of money and which were pretty worthy stuff.

Never forgetting that FDR was a horrific war criminal. On the other hand on the banking front he left us with a banking system that set us up for the most successful economic period in world history. So horrible war criminal that he is he actually did do some good things.