Republican myth about FDR Depression Busted

David Shuster launches new weekly segment on his show, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, called Mythbu$ter with Dan Gross from Newsweek magazine and uses historical fact to bust the myth perpetrated by FauxNews, George Will, and other conservatives that FDR's policies deepened the Great Depression.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• mythbuster
• david shuster
• dan gross
• 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
• FDR
• George Will
• Faux News

[ApopkaDave]

While the dow quadrupled, and the rich got much richer, unemployment never went under 15% and those who were employed worked for pennys risking life and limb on FDRs projects. FDR recovered the economy with the blood of the poor.

[GateKeeper50hotmail]

Apopka is Seminole for potato - so to Potatohead Dave I respond that under FDR labor gained the right to organize and the minimum wage and 40 hour work weeks were put into law.  The poor gained more under FDR than any prior president.

[Xasew]

Depression of 1920-21. Ever heard of it? Its first year was worse than the one of the Great Depression.

Didn't need stimulus, didn't need inflation. It just cured itself. FDR fans might want to look into that.

[ArmednSafe]

According to Keynesians, when the economy takes a dive from the unsustainable trajectory that they set it on with artificially low interest rates, the government needs to take money from productive people making things that people want and spend it on making things people don't want. For example, they concluded that the problem with the economy was that there weren't enough new cars. So, they started a program where you could destroy your working car and get tax money for a brand new one. morons

[Xasew]

@flanksteak2

Yes, it was. That's to be expected, as everyone partially financed WW I through inflation. Not only was there a general recession/depression, but the economies of Germany, Poland and Hungary pretty much imploded in the early 20s. Russia, who at the time was a big player in the global economy, was completely devastated by civil war and its aftermath. Japan in fact tried to fight the recession by propping prices up and (not surprisingly) it failed horribly.

[flanksteak2]

@Xasew The recession. Was it worldwide as it was during the great depression?

[Xasew]

@flanksteak2

"...worldwide phenomenon..."

Are you asking about to the recession or the recovery?

[flanksteak2]

@Xasew Oh good.

Was it a worldwide phenomenon? Or just local here to America?

What were it's causes?

[Xasew]

@flanksteak2

The recovery began well before the Fed started its open market operations. Not to mention most of the monetary expansion took place in the latter half of the 20s.

[flanksteak2]

@Xasew It didn't cure itself, the money supply was massively expanded beginning in the early 20's.

[Xasew]

@djdk89

Not enough work? Was that a joke? How about thinking through the implications of that statement? Did they abolish scarcity for a few years?

Artificially propping prices up in labor and agriculture, destroying world trade through Smoot-Hawley, monetary manipulation, bailouts, stimulus through public works and so on... Those didn't have anything to do with the Great Depression?

Can you point to a single relevant deregulation during the 1920s?

[djdk89]

@Xasew The depression in the 1921 was cause from not enough work. the great depression was cause by the housing bubble and agricultural disasters and deregulation. Government usually intervenes like the 1980 recession just with tax cuts.

[Xasew]

@djdk89

They don't cure themselves when the government intervenes.