How would you feel about Pres. Obama stimulating the economy like FDR did with t

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   Daniel J. Neumannposted 15 years ago

   How would you feel about Pres. Obama stimulating the economy like FDR did with the New Deal?
   
   What if he put money into infranstructure, green energy, and writing/art programs to generate employment, while rennovating our aging roads, power systems, and struggling arts.

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   scrambleposted 15 years ago

   Sounds too much like central planning. Everyone would do well to look up an old economist of the Austrian school by the name of Henry Hazlett. I forget the name of the book but it is a very simple to read argument for small government. Generally speaking it argues that the most efficient and best solution for everyone in the long run is by reducing taxes and government services as much as possible, thereby letting demand take care of the stimulating. The only thing the government needs to take care of is areas where the market does a bad job. Examples would be emergency services or defence.

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   mthurstonposted 15 years ago

   Dust storms literally blowing the land away.  Plagues of biblical proportion.  A 20-30% unemployment rate. $10.00 a month welfare releif for a family of 13.  Hobo jungles.  Malnutrition, and starving.  Our great-grandparents are spinning in their graves.
   
   The depression of the 1930s was the monster of monsters.  In 20 years, I probably won't even remember this most recent recession.  Yet, if you watch a senior citizen who went through it or watched their parents go through it, you can see that it shapes every aspect of their lives; save, save, save, never indulge, never throw anything away.  I'd say Obama doesn't have half the job FDR had.
   
   But I'll try to answer the question with another question: Would it be a good thing if Obama adopted more FDR policy?  The answer I think, is probably not. 
   
   Alot of FDRs programs actually cut back production and forced employers to pay workers higher wages.  Which, in turn left employers hiring fewer and fewer workers. Most of the time the poor got poorer and everyone else just scraped by.
   
   One of the largest sources of revenue for the New Deal was by tripling federal taxes.  Of these taxes, the ones that raked in the most were excise taxes.
   
   To paint a picture of how significant excise taxes are, consider that in the 30s, the amount of do-re-mi collected through excise taxes was larger than the revenues of personal and corporate income taxes combined. 
   
   The point is this: Who pays a disproportionately high percentage of excises taxes? You and me, the middle class.  And those less fortunate than ourselves end up paying even more because...well....they have a pretty good reason to drink like fish and smoke like chimneys.

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   American Tigerposted 15 years ago

   How would I feel? Is "suicidal" too strong a word? FDR extended the Great Depression a good 10 years by inflicting the New Deal on America.

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   Freeway Flyerposted 15 years ago

   I'm not going to argue that FDR did everything right, but when you consider that the economy grew steadily worse during the Hoover years, it's hard to argue that "laissez faire" and limited government was getting the job done. Ultimately, it took a huge stimulus package - World War II - to finally kick the economy into high gear. There is no way that the federal government would think of trying a stimulus package of that scale today, and unfortunately, small scale measures (relative to WWII) may do more harm than good. Conclusions seem to largely depend on who is crunching the numbers.

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   The Grey Areaposted 14 years ago

   http://youtu.be/Jnqto6sDtGI I found this video about "The New Deal" by Obama

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