All Posts Tagged With: "New Deal"
Art Needs No State Subsidies
It’s feeding time again, and artists and cultural groups are lining up at the trough. The bailout package approved by Congress in February threw another $50 million at the arts. For the better part of the past year, music impresario Quincy Jones beseeched Barack Obama to add a secretary of arts to his cabinet. In [...]
23Oct2009 | Bruce Edward Walker | 1 comment | ContinuedStealth Expansion of Government Power
The government of the United States spent the year debating major new undertakings, ranging from health care to climate change to energy development to tax reform. Yet a far more fundamental shift, in the form of a rapid and pervasive expansion of government power over the private sector of the economy, has been going on [...]
23Oct2009 | Murray Weidenbaum | 0 comments | ContinuedThe “I Hate the Poor” Act of 2009
So I was shaving the other day, and the man on the morning talk radio show was on a roll. Cash for Clunkers was being temporarily shut down, or so declared the PR flack in the Department of Waste that administers the program, and Talk Show Guy thought this taught great lessons. “This was a good program! [...]
23Oct2009 | Christopher Westley | 4 comments | ContinuedNew Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
Not everyone loved President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even in 1936, when he enjoyed his most lopsided electoral victory, almost 17 million voters cast their ballots for Alf Landon. During Roosevelt’s long presidency, he attracted vigorous literary critics, such as H. L. Mencken, John T. Flynn, and Garet Garrett. But the winners write the history, and [...]
19Aug2009 | Robert Higgs | 1 comment | ContinuedFDR’s Lucky Timing
It’s not clear how any of FDR’s 1933 policies could have accounted for a 17 percent increase in GDP, even if they promoted expansion, because they wouldn’t have had time to ripple through the economy. It seems more likely that FDR had the good fortune to come into office near the bottom of the Depression, and enough adjustments in wages, prices, and other factors had occurred that the economy was ready to recover.
10Jun2009 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedWhat is Seen and What is Unseen: Government “Job Creation”
How can Obama and his economic advisers know what kinds of jobs will position our economy to “lead the world” in the long term? Indeed, how can we expect anyone to know what kinds of jobs will be able to offer such a guarantee of wealth and security, considering the enormous complexity of our world?
10Jun2009 | Larissa Price | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Great Depression and World War II
What about World War II? Did it end the Great Depression? More generally, is war good for the economy? I answer both in the negative and borrow here from Ludwig von Mises: “War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.” As Higgs points out, because of the array of interventions in the wartime economy, war materiel was valued incorrectly and therefore the GDP data overstate economic conditions. Moreover, conscription and arms production gave a misleading employment picture
21May2009 | Art Carden | 5 comments | ContinuedThe NRA: How Price-Fixing Perpetuated the Great Depression
The National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) dramatically altered America’s traditional free-market system. Under the NRA, a majority of firms in any industry had government approval backed by force to determine how much a factory could expand, what wages had to be paid, the number of hours to be worked, and the prices of products. Whether or not a businessman helped write the code for his industry, he was bound by the terms and subject to a fine or jail term if he violated them.
1Apr2009 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 17 comments | ContinuedU.S. Agricultural Programs: Who Pays?
E. C. Pasour, Jr. is professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University. He is coauthor with Randal R. Rucker of Plowshares and Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture (Independent Institute, 2005).
The Economist labeled the recently enacted 2008 farm bill “A Harvest of Disgrace” (May 24, 2008). The five-year $307 [...]
Subsidies Hurt Recipients Too
More than ever, historians need to study the economic consequences of government programs. Only by analyzing the results of past government intervention can we calculate the impact of future government intervention.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) provides a useful example. Established as part of the New Deal in the 1930s, it was a favorite program of [...]
The Great Duration, 1929-41
Economists, following the usage of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in their classic Monetary History of the United States, call the economic collapse between 1929 and 1933 the Great Contraction. In my own writings, I have added two similar terms to refer to other aspects of the Great Depression—the Great Duration and the Great Escape. [...]
1Jul2007 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Shortcomings of Government Charity
Jude Blanchette is a freelance writer living in China.
In their book, Myths of Rich and Poor, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm observe, “Some part of human nature connects with the apocalyptic. Time and again, the pessimists among us have envisioned the world going straight to hell.” To be sure, “pessimists” apparently run most national [...]
Welfare for the Rich
Advocates of the free market—including those considered “right-wing” and “conservative”—believe it is wrong to violate property rights. Consequently, they oppose egalitarian measures to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Such “income redistribution” represents naked theft and epitomizes the Founding Fathers’ fears of unfettered democracy. At the same time, champions of laissez faire [...]
1Apr2007 | Robert Murphy | 1 comment | ContinuedDeath by Public Works
Burton Folsom, Jr. is the Charles Kline Professor in History and Management at Hillsdale College. His book The Myth of the Robber Barons is in its fourth edition.
Almost all historians who write on the New Deal praise Franklin Roosevelt for using government to “solve” economic problems. Often, however, these historians only tell part of the [...]
Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelts America, Mussolinis Italy, and Hitlers Germany, 1933-1939
By Wolfgang Schivelbusch Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
1Jan2007 | agardner | 0 comments | ContinuedWhich New Deal Program Had a Death Rate?
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was often hazardous to the health of the American economy. Sometimes it was even hazardous to the health of Americans. An example is Roosevelt ’s almost-forgotten decision in 1934 to cancel the federal airmail contracts. Here is the story.
Airmail service began in 1918, and the first such flights were done by [...]
F. A. Hayek and The Road to Serfdom: A Sixtieth-Anniversary Appreciation
Sixty years ago this month, in March 1944, The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek was first published in Great Britain. For six decades it has continued to challenge and influence the political- economic landscape of the world. Hayek delivered an ominous warning that political trends in the Western democracies were all in the [...]
1Mar2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued-
Latest Toon
-
Book Reviews
-
The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
