"I welcome their hatred" FDR

[midcan5]

You know FDR accomplished lots when the right is still fighting him. In the end the massive Keynesian spending the war brought on helped end the GD, but FDR accomplished a mountain load of good stuff. There is a reason he is always rated in the top three of American presidents. Social Security alone is a accomplishment of greatness and its greatness was recently shown during the great recession another republican accomplishment following similar activity of Harding Coolidge and Hoover.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/180822-i-welcome-their-hatred-fdr-2.html#post4029337
http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/180822-i-welcome-their-hatred-fdr.html

 

[Foxfyre]

You know FDR accomplished lots when the right is still fighting him. In the end the massive Keynesian spending the war brought on helped end the GD, but FDR accomplished a mountain load of good stuff. There is a reason he is always rated in the top three of American presidents. Social Security alone is a accomplishment of greatness and its greatness was recently shown during the great recession another republican accomplishment following similar activity of Harding Coolidge and Hoover.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/180822-i-welcome-their-hatred-fdr-2.html#post4029337
http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/180822-i-welcome-their-hatred-fdr.html

An excellent topic for debate and discussion in another thread, but changes the subject from this thread topic.

Edit hours later: Ah I see that this has been made a new thread and is now separated from the Wealth Creation thread. That's good. This is in fact a very good topic.

 

[Againsheila]

No, the beginning of WWII ended the depression. We sold our arms to the allies and didn't enter the war until they ran out of money. The end of WWII brought about the strong middle-class due to many projects started to put the men who came back from the war back to work. They also heavily pushed for the women who went to work during the war to become homemakers, leaving those jobs vacant for the men.

There are two schools of thought as to what constitutes the end of the Great Depression, one being the opinion of the academic economists whose calculations are based on various academic factors, the other being the opinion of those citizens, including my own father and two uncles who were lifted from the depths of poverty by FDR's federal make-work programs. And there were millions of them.

My understanding is FDR's approach to ending the Depression was slow but sure, and it eliminated much suffering. The critics insist there was a faster way to end it but it would not have addressed the street-level suffering for several years. According to my parents, and every one of their contemporaries I've ever spoken with, listened to, or read, the Depression ended when FDR ("The Man") gave them work, and pride, enabling them to put food back on their tables, pay doctor bills, and buy shoes for their children.

FDR was bitterly criticized -- but not by the People.

No, the people loved him. He was re-elected how many times? The Presidential term limit was put in place due to him.

 

[Againsheila]

Come on guys. Any of you who have attended highschool know that income and profits are two different things. (Or maybe not. These days, who knows what is being taught in highschool?)

Anyhow, taxes are paid on profits, not income. You have to see a corporation's P & L to know what percentage of taxes are actually being paid.

If you guys really want some real skinny on what is happening in the world of corporate taxes, Forbes has boiled it down to some key elements in this article:

Excerpted:

Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ - news - people ) and others among the top 25 state in their annual reports that if Obama's tax measures pass it would mean a certain tax hike, probably amounting to billions of dollars.

Would no more tax holiday for GE really end up helping Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer? Doubtful. "The average Joe should be in favor of lower corporate taxes," says Hodge, "because ultimately they are paying the corporate income tax. Either as workers, getting lower wages and fewer jobs, or as consumers, paying higher prices, or as retirees, getting lower dividends and earnings on their investments."
What The Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes - Forbes.com

And in rebuttal to Sheila's video, I will provide an article from the Heritage Foundation, the opposing argument from Think Progress, that provides a very different perspective on wealth in the USA:

Excerpt:

Alan Reynolds reminds readers that the left repeatedly cites income figures from a famous study by economist Emanuel Saez, which show that top earners’ share of income has increased. Yet the left never cites figures from another study by Saez on wealth inequality, which show that top earner’s share of wealth at the beginning of the 21st century is lower than it was in the early 1900s.
Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation

It was the gilded age of the early 1900's, that income inequality you are talking about, that led to the first great depression. It's not a coincidence that now we are facing the same income equality we are facing another world wide depression.

 

[Foxfyre]

Okay, again folks this thread is not about the depression or what pulled us out of it. A 91% tax rate is appropriate to note re wealth inequality and wealth redistribution, however.'

So let's look at the history of various tax rates.

◾Across-the-board tax rate reductions in the 1920s reduced the top rate from 71 percent to 24 percent. The economy boomed, growing by 59 percent between 1921 and 1929.

◾In 1930, Herbert Hoover raised tax rates from 25 percent to a maximum of 63 percent, and Franklin Roosevelt boosted them to 79 percent later in the decade. The 1930s, to put it mildly, are not remembered as one of the American economy's better decades.2

◾Across-the-board tax rate reductions introduced by President John F. Kennedy reduced the top rate from 91 percent to 70 percent. These lower rates, along with substantially lower taxes on savings and investment, are associated with the longest economic expansion in American history.3

◾The Johnson surtax, enacted in 1968 during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, combined with the inflation-induced bracket creep of the 1970s (subjecting taxpayers to higher rates even though their real incomes had not changed), resulted in a decade of stagflation.

◾Reagan's across-the-board tax cuts ushered in America's longest peacetime expansion, helping to create 20 million new jobs and pushing incomes and living standards to record highs.

◾The tax rate increases imposed under George Bush and Bill Clinton, as outlined below, are associated with the slowest growing economy in 50 years and a decline of more than $2,000 in the average family's income.
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates: Comparing 1920s, 1960s, and 1980s

Again the question that every citizen should ask himself/herself. Is it more important to take money from the rich? Or is it more important to increase revenues to the U.S. treasury.

Does anybody here understand that every dollar that government takes out of the private sector, whether from the rich or the poor, is a dollar that is not available to the private sector to save so that others have money to borrow, invest so that companies can grow, or spend to expand the economy? Every dollar that the government takes is a dollar not available to hire people, increase wages, increase benefits?

And does anybody here understand that it is the rich who have the means to save more money, so that others have money to borrow?

Does anybody here understand that it is the rich who have the most means to invest so that companies can grow and provide more jobs and opportunity for more people?

Does anybody here understand that it is the rich who are in the position to hire people and give those people opportunity to enrich themselves?

Another question:

What is more important? To make rich people pay more? Or to make it possible for more people to become rich?

Edit hours after this post was originally posted in the Wealth Inequality thread: The reerence is to that thread but works here too.

 

[Foxfyre]

And to follow up, this is exerpted from my recent post in the Wealth Inequality thread:

Actually planting seeds does not always produced plants, then blossoms, then fruit--you got a bit of that out of order there --I have planted plenty of seeds that produced nothing but a reduction in my bank account and net worth, however insignificant that might have been. And however well intended FDR's policies might have been, there are many lettered economists who now admit that he not only did not end the Depression, he prolonged it. And his policies have resulted in a massive entitlement albatross that year by year has since increased the drag on the U.S. economy, makse wealth acquisition ever more difficult to obtain, most especially for those who are just now getting started.

Here's just one opinion on that. There are many many more.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."
FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate / UCLA Newsroom

Not only did Roosevelt's seeds not sprout, but they took up a lot of ground that should have been used for more productive (i.e.) private purposes.

 

[PaulS1950]

FDR sponsored a lot of things that made a huge temporary difference but most of what he did was circumvent the constitutional limits on the federal government setting the stage for the following decline in rights that lawfully belong to the states and the people.
The only reason he got away with it was that the states allowed it and actually encouraged it. It has been a huge lesson in the old addage, "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

 

[whitehall]

"I am not a dictator"....B. Hussein Obama.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

You know FDR accomplished lots when the right is still fighting him. In the end the massive Keynesian spending the war brought on helped end the GD, but FDR accomplished a mountain load of good stuff. There is a reason he is always rated in the top three of American presidents. Social Security alone is a accomplishment of greatness and its greatness was recently shown during the great recession another republican accomplishment following similar activity of Harding Coolidge and Hoover.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/180822-i-welcome-their-hatred-fdr-2.html#post4029337
http://www.usmessageboard.com/history/180822-i-welcome-their-hatred-fdr.html

Social Security alone is a accomplishment of greatness

Yes! Forcing us to contribute 12.4% of our income for a low investment return makes me long for more liberal bad math.

 

[Foxfyre]

FDR sponsored a lot of things that made a huge temporary difference but most of what he did was circumvent the constitutional limits on the federal government setting the stage for the following decline in rights that lawfully belong to the states and the people.
The only reason he got away with it was that the states allowed it and actually encouraged it. It has been a huge lesson in the old addage, "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

Actually it was Teddy Roosevelt who did that by turning the Constitution on its head. The Founders concept was that the federal government was authorized by the people to do nothing that the Constitution did not specifically allow.

T Roosevelt turned that on its head by putting forth a doctrine that the government could do anything that the Constitution did not explicitly forbid.

And because our patriots were caught sleeping, that was allowed to slide pretty much unchallenged and opened the door for FDR to test the concept of government relief. And for the first time, the government provided charity which it had previously assumed it was not authorized to do. And the government started a tiny snowball of entitlements rolling down hill, inconspicuous and seemingly harmless at first, but gaining speed and size until it is this huge thing that mows down everything in its path and dwarfs everything else.

And, as I previously posted, not only were FDR's well intended policies only beneficial in the very short term, but they prolonged the misery for years longer than otherwise would have been the case.

 

[PaulS1950]

I never said that FDR was the first, just another in a long chain that began before Abraham Lincoln who was the first president to declare war without the consent of congress and violated the tenth amendment as well.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

FDR thought we were a Democracy too.

 

[midcan5]

...Reagan's across-the-board tax cuts ushered in America's longest peacetime expansion, helping to create 20 million new jobs and pushing incomes and living standards to record highs...

This OP was a reply, not a thread, not sure what happened?

I will only address one of the distortions from the corporate paid and managed propaganda machine called the Heritage Foundation. Reagan raised taxes 11 or 13th times dependent on who you read. But Reagan, because the wealth went mostly to the rich caused the collapse of the economy which led to Bush Sr losing. Had Reagan been a success for all the people, the bubble he created would not have collapsed so quickly. But that it did proves his defenders wrong. I will give Reagan credit for his bipartisan work on Social Security. Good work there.

Corporate propagandists like the Heritage Foundation have so muddied reality with their selection of facts that real history is lost on those who do not take the time to study other material than agitprop. Having lived through Reagan I have to say he was not loved by the right or the left much of the time, it is an odd fantasy that now he reins supreme among the republicans and conservatives. He seemed senile near the end of his presidency and often confused reality with a movie. It may just be that this actor who started with ideas and values became a myth even to himself near his end and is now a myth of corporate propaganda for all time. Excellent book below for those who learn from places other than Heritage.

"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalism—funding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hands-Making-Conservative-Movement/dp/0393059308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8]Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan: Kim Phillips-Fein: 9780393059304: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Personal income and capital gain taxes were LOWER when Reagan left office.

LOWER

Do libs understand what "lower" means?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Personal income and capital gain taxes were LOWER when Reagan left office.

LOWER

Do libs understand what "lower" means?

No, they think dropping the top rate from 70% to 28% means he raised taxes.

 

[regent]

Personal income and capital gain taxes were LOWER when Reagan left office.

LOWER

Do libs understand what "lower" means?

Sounds like Lower means the government has to borrow, tripling the national debt, so Reagan could make those taxes lower. America could have recovered from Reagan, but getting ready to double the national debt once again was Bush. When both, Reagan and Bush, had finished, America was almost ready for the glue factory and in dire need of help.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Personal income and capital gain taxes were LOWER when Reagan left office.

LOWER

Do libs understand what "lower" means?

Sounds like Lower means the government has to borrow, tripling the national debt, so Reagan could make those taxes lower. America could have recovered from Reagan, but getting ready to double the national debt once again was Bush. When both, Reagan and Bush, had finished, America was almost ready for the glue factory and in dire need of help.

Sounds like Lower means the government has to borrow

The top rate dropped from 70% to 28%.
Did receipts drop 60% as well?

 

[Foxfyre]

...Reagan's across-the-board tax cuts ushered in America's longest peacetime expansion, helping to create 20 million new jobs and pushing incomes and living standards to record highs...

This OP was a reply, not a thread, not sure what happened?

I will only address one of the distortions from the corporate paid and managed propaganda machine called the Heritage Foundation. Reagan raised taxes 11 or 13th times dependent on who you read. But Reagan, because the wealth went mostly to the rich caused the collapse of the economy which led to Bush Sr losing. Had Reagan been a success for all the people, the bubble he created would not have collapsed so quickly. But that it did proves his defenders wrong. I will give Reagan credit for his bipartisan work on Social Security. Good work there.

Corporate propagandists like the Heritage Foundation have so muddied reality with their selection of facts that real history is lost on those who do not take the time to study other material than agitprop. Having lived through Reagan I have to say he was not loved by the right or the left much of the time, it is an odd fantasy that now he reins supreme among the republicans and conservatives. He seemed senile near the end of his presidency and often confused reality with a movie. It may just be that this actor who started with ideas and values became a myth even to himself near his end and is now a myth of corporate propaganda for all time. Excellent book below for those who learn from places other than Heritage.

"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalism—funding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hands-Making-Conservative-Movement/dp/0393059308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8]Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan: Kim Phillips-Fein: 9780393059304: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

Well you'll have to show how the Heritage Foundation economists, researchers, and statisticians are less authoritative than your sources before you will have much credibility in dismissing them. Yes Heritage does come from a solid conservative perspective but they are entirely non partisan in their analysis, and will criticize a Republican endorsed program as quickly as they will criticize a Democrat endorsed program. I'm sure your sources probably come from a solid left wing perspective do they not?

UCLA is hardly a right wing organization, but they figured out that the common doctrine re FDR's New Deal is wrong and the facts paint a much less rosy picture of the success of those programs. And I don't think an amateur Amazon.com review of Phillips-Fein's book quite qualifies as 'authoritative' nor a rebuttal to the statements the Heritage Foundation presented. If you have read any of Phillips-Fein works--she is NOT easy reading--you might come to a different conclusion than you did reading that review.

At any rate, a review of the entire Reagan Administration in no way disputes the fact that the Reagan tax cuts did usher the longest uninterrupted peacetime economic expansion that the nation had yet experienced. Whatever else you wish to add to that statement, positive or negative, still does not make it untrue.

And UCLA should be commended for taking a huge academic risk in presenting a very different image of the sacred cow of FDR's 'economic success.'

 

[regent]

...Reagan's across-the-board tax cuts ushered in America's longest peacetime expansion, helping to create 20 million new jobs and pushing incomes and living standards to record highs...

This OP was a reply, not a thread, not sure what happened?

I will only address one of the distortions from the corporate paid and managed propaganda machine called the Heritage Foundation. Reagan raised taxes 11 or 13th times dependent on who you read. But Reagan, because the wealth went mostly to the rich caused the collapse of the economy which led to Bush Sr losing. Had Reagan been a success for all the people, the bubble he created would not have collapsed so quickly. But that it did proves his defenders wrong. I will give Reagan credit for his bipartisan work on Social Security. Good work there.

Corporate propagandists like the Heritage Foundation have so muddied reality with their selection of facts that real history is lost on those who do not take the time to study other material than agitprop. Having lived through Reagan I have to say he was not loved by the right or the left much of the time, it is an odd fantasy that now he reins supreme among the republicans and conservatives. He seemed senile near the end of his presidency and often confused reality with a movie. It may just be that this actor who started with ideas and values became a myth even to himself near his end and is now a myth of corporate propaganda for all time. Excellent book below for those who learn from places other than Heritage.

"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalism—funding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hands-Making-Conservative-Movement/dp/0393059308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8]Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan: Kim Phillips-Fein: 9780393059304: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

Well you'll have to show how the Heritage Foundation economists, researchers, and statisticians are less authoritative than your sources before you will have much credibility in dismissing them. Yes Heritage does come from a solid conservative perspective but they are entirely non partisan in their analysis, and will criticize a Republican endorsed program as quickly as they will criticize a Democrat endorsed program. I'm sure your sources probably come from a solid left wing perspective do they not?

UCLA is hardly a right wing organization, but they figured out that the common doctrine re FDR's New Deal is wrong and the facts paint a much less rosy picture of the success of those programs. And I don't think an amateur Amazon.com review of Phillips-Fein's book quite qualifies as 'authoritative' nor a rebuttal to the statements the Heritage Foundation presented. If you have read any of Phillips-Fein works--she is NOT easy reading--you might come to a different conclusion than you did reading that review.

At any rate, a review of the entire Reagan Administration in no way disputes the fact that the Reagan tax cuts did usher the longest uninterrupted peacetime economic expansion that the nation had yet experienced. Whatever else you wish to add to that statement, positive or negative, still does not make it untrue.

And UCLA should be commended for taking a huge academic risk in presenting a very different image of the sacred cow of FDR's 'economic success.'

I don't think universities make those kinds of presentations, perhaps some of their faculty wrote a book, but other faculty members in other universities were also writing books. The bottom line, however, when 238 noted university historians and presidential experts were polled, as has been done since 1948, to rate the presidents, they rated FDR, Americas greatest president. As for Reagan he was rated 18th. best just being beat out by John Adams who took 17th best president.

 

[PaulS1950]

Best president under what constraints? Were they rating presidents on their compliance with the constitution or their popularity?