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what was that econ study about FDR's programs that allowed for market oligarchy or monopoly in exchange for more pay, that at least in theory hurt recovery? I was sold in part. But the irony is that FDR only managed full employment AFTER he virtually nationalized the entire economy to mobilize for war. Of course, Hitler accomplished the same. FDR did so unwillingly, and Truman's claim to greatness stems largely from his transitioning back to private markets.
".... he virtually nationalized the entire economy to mobilize for war."
OMG!!!
Your knowledge of FDR is abysmal!!
No wonder you have no difficulty in worshiping him.
The exact opposite of what you state is the case!
FDR, faced with a war, backed down and went crawling to factory owners....
1. John Maynard Keynes, in a letter published in the NYTimes, December 31, 1933, warned even wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action. Even Keynes saw the danger in treating the nations capitalists as an enemy, as the unscrupulous money changers, as FDR called them in his first Inaugural.
Again?
"...the nations capitalists ... the unscrupulous money changers, as FDR called them in his first Inaugural."
2. This was the position he put the nation in:
FDR did very little for the Army either with its size or weapons and during the 1930s, his defense budgets were cut to the bone. To quote George Marshall's words to FDR in May 1940: "If you don't do something...and do it right away, I don't know what is going to happen to this country".
a. Due to cuts in military spending through the 30s as a percentage of the federal budget, the United States was woefully unprepared for war. The US was 17th in the world in military strength, and this ultimately let us into a two-ocean war.
Folsom and Folsom, "FDR Goes To War"
3 .Careful students of the Roosevelt presidency knew that war must be near because FDR had decided to change the tone of the political debate in Washington. For almost eight years, Wall Street bankers and corporate leaders had been his favorite scapegoats for explaining why the Great Depression was persisting. The premise of his New Deal, after all was that businessmen had failed and that government should regulate, plan and direct much of the American economy to break the hold of the Great Depression.
4. On May 16, 1940, Roosevelt had addressed Congress and asked for more than a billion dollars for defense, with a commitment for fifty thousand military aircraft. He knew, also, that he needed the good will of business to win the war: no longer would he call them privileged princes thirsting for power.
4. On May 26, 1940 his Fireside Chat signaled a new relationship with business: he would insure their profits, and assuage their fears that he would nationalize their factories.
a. we are calling upon the resources, the efficiency and the ingenuity of the American manufacturers of war material of all kinds -- airplanes and tanks and guns and ships, and all the hundreds of products that go into this material. The Government of the United States itself manufactures few of the implements of war. Private industry will continue to be the source of most of this material, and private industry will have to be speeded up to produce it at the rate and efficiency called for by the needs of the times . Private industry will have the responsibility of providing the best, speediest and most efficient mass production of which it is capable.
On National Defense - May 26, 1940
Can you imagine how deeply you'd embarrass yourself if I weren't here to teach you????
Your gratitude is modestly accepted.
(Curtsy)
Until Germany overran France, America's primary problem was the Great Depression. After the fall of France, FDR turned to defense, but easier said than done. The Republican isolationists as usual fought FDR on rearming, and on helping Britain. Our first peace time draft was started and factories turned to making war goods for Britain and America. When the USSR was attacked help was extended to the USSR. The peacetime draft, for one year, was extended by one vote in the House and this only a couple of months before Pearl Harbor.
".... he virtually nationalized the entire economy to mobilize for war."
OMG!!!
Your knowledge of FDR is abysmal!!
No wonder you have no difficulty in worshiping him.
The exact opposite of what you state is the case!
FDR, faced with a war, backed down and went crawling to factory owners....
1. John Maynard Keynes, in a letter published in the NYTimes, December 31, 1933, warned even wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action. Even Keynes saw the danger in treating the nations capitalists as an enemy, as the unscrupulous money changers, as FDR called them in his first Inaugural.
Again?
"...the nations capitalists ... the unscrupulous money changers, as FDR called them in his first Inaugural."
2. This was the position he put the nation in:
FDR did very little for the Army either with its size or weapons and during the 1930s, his defense budgets were cut to the bone. To quote George Marshall's words to FDR in May 1940: "If you don't do something...and do it right away, I don't know what is going to happen to this country".
a. Due to cuts in military spending through the 30s as a percentage of the federal budget, the United States was woefully unprepared for war. The US was 17th in the world in military strength, and this ultimately let us into a two-ocean war.
Folsom and Folsom, "FDR Goes To War"
3 .Careful students of the Roosevelt presidency knew that war must be near because FDR had decided to change the tone of the political debate in Washington. For almost eight years, Wall Street bankers and corporate leaders had been his favorite scapegoats for explaining why the Great Depression was persisting. The premise of his New Deal, after all was that businessmen had failed and that government should regulate, plan and direct much of the American economy to break the hold of the Great Depression.
4. On May 16, 1940, Roosevelt had addressed Congress and asked for more than a billion dollars for defense, with a commitment for fifty thousand military aircraft. He knew, also, that he needed the good will of business to win the war: no longer would he call them privileged princes thirsting for power.
4. On May 26, 1940 his Fireside Chat signaled a new relationship with business: he would insure their profits, and assuage their fears that he would nationalize their factories.
a. we are calling upon the resources, the efficiency and the ingenuity of the American manufacturers of war material of all kinds -- airplanes and tanks and guns and ships, and all the hundreds of products that go into this material. The Government of the United States itself manufactures few of the implements of war. Private industry will continue to be the source of most of this material, and private industry will have to be speeded up to produce it at the rate and efficiency called for by the needs of the times . Private industry will have the responsibility of providing the best, speediest and most efficient mass production of which it is capable.
On National Defense - May 26, 1940
Can you imagine how deeply you'd embarrass yourself if I weren't here to teach you????
Your gratitude is modestly accepted.
(Curtsy)
Until Germany overran France, America's primary problem was the Great Depression. After the fall of France, FDR turned to defense, but easier said than done. The Republican isolationists as usual fought FDR on rearming, and on helping Britain. Our first peace time draft was started and factories turned to making war goods for Britain and America. When the USSR was attacked help was extended to the USSR. The peacetime draft, for one year, was extended by one vote in the House and this only a couple of months before Pearl Harbor.
Yeah....you're right: can't expect him to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
What was he again?
Oh...yeah....only President of the United States.
Plus...he had to figure the fastest way to recognize the Bolsheviks...
What more could any one man do????
Ooops....did I say 'man'?
I meant demigod.
Until Germany overran France, America's primary problem was the Great Depression. After the fall of France, FDR turned to defense, but easier said than done. The Republican isolationists as usual fought FDR on rearming, and on helping Britain. Our first peace time draft was started and factories turned to making war goods for Britain and America. When the USSR was attacked help was extended to the USSR. The peacetime draft, for one year, was extended by one vote in the House and this only a couple of months before Pearl Harbor.
Yeah....you're right: can't expect him to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
What was he again?
Oh...yeah....only President of the United States.
Plus...he had to figure the fastest way to recognize the Bolsheviks...
What more could any one man do????
Ooops....did I say 'man'?
I meant demigod.
Number one, kiddo, top of the heap, the king of the hill. .
The beauty of FDR is we still live with many of his policies and reforms and will for our lifetimes. .
The beauty of FDR is we still live with many of his policies and reforms and will for our lifetimes. .
It says something about you that you find it beautiful that we are saddled with endless obligations that we cannot afford to meet endlessly. I guess you're hoping you will be beautifully gone by the time math runs out of patience and someone has to finally pay the tab that SOB opened for us.
It was never paid off and will never be paid off because by its very nature it cannot be paid off.
Until Germany overran France, America's primary problem was the Great Depression. After the fall of France, FDR turned to defense, but easier said than done. The Republican isolationists as usual fought FDR on rearming, and on helping Britain. Our first peace time draft was started and factories turned to making war goods for Britain and America. When the USSR was attacked help was extended to the USSR. The peacetime draft, for one year, was extended by one vote in the House and this only a couple of months before Pearl Harbor.
Yeah....you're right: can't expect him to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
What was he again?
Oh...yeah....only President of the United States.
Plus...he had to figure the fastest way to recognize the Bolsheviks...
What more could any one man do????
Ooops....did I say 'man'?
I meant demigod.
Number one, kiddo, top of the heap, the king of the hill. The beauty of FDR is we still live with many of his policies and reforms and will for our lifetimes. By the way America recognized the USSR long before Hitler invaded that nation.
It was never paid off and will never be paid off because by its very nature it cannot be paid off.
Dennis Prager recently wrote this explanation of the Liberal viewpoint:
There are mature and immature people all across the political spectrum. But Leftist positions are unusually childlike because Left-wing positions are nearly all based on identifying ones wishes with reality. ..The Left would like to believe that people are basically good. Therefore the Left declares people to be basically good ..The Left would like to believe that all countries, cultures, and individuals want the same things-a peaceful, tolerant, open, free society. Therefore, they believe it."
But it is not just the run-of-the-mill Leftist.
Bullitt, in his letter, indicts the head-Liberal of his time, FDR, elaborating on the danger of self-deception:
"Wishful thinking has produced the following logic: Because the Red Army has fought magnificently, the Soviet Union is a democratic state which desires no annexation and is devoted to the Four Freedoms; because Stalingrad has been defended with superb heroism there is no O.G.P.U. (Secret Police)."
Bullitt, "Correspondence," p. 578.
As then, we still have the Liberal view of FDR....'top of the heap.'
Dennis Prager recently wrote this explanation of the Liberal viewpoint:
There are mature and immature people all across the political spectrum. But Leftist positions are unusually childlike because Left-wing positions are nearly all based on identifying ones wishes with reality. ..The Left would like to believe that people are basically good. Therefore the Left declares people to be basically good ..The Left would like to believe that all countries, cultures, and individuals want the same things-a peaceful, tolerant, open, free society. Therefore, they believe it."
But it is not just the run-of-the-mill Leftist.
Bullitt, in his letter, indicts the head-Liberal of his time, FDR, elaborating on the danger of self-deception:
"Wishful thinking has produced the following logic: Because the Red Army has fought magnificently, the Soviet Union is a democratic state which desires no annexation and is devoted to the Four Freedoms; because Stalingrad has been defended with superb heroism there is no O.G.P.U. (Secret Police)."
Bullitt, "Correspondence," p. 578.
As then, we still have the Liberal view of FDR....'top of the heap.'
Well actually more of a historical top of the heap view than liberal. We still have two others that vie for top dog, Washington and Lincoln. Were they liberal selections or historical?
The problem is with historians there is a political bias.
Like Reagan having a POV of limited government, his expansion of the War on Drugs was just the beginning for freedoms lost from his presidency. Not to mention the Patriot Act.
In fairness to Reagan, I think he realized he was just at the wrong time in history to push his view of limited govt. He did what was politically possible with stuff like block granting fed programs to states. He realized he had lost the public opinion battle on medicare, so he allowed taxes to rise to fund it and soc sec. The war on drugs and abortion were issues that appealed to factions within his big tent, so he threw them a bone, realizing neither were going anywhere.
There is a glaring fallacy in your post.
Simple put, growing government is akin to the drunk who tries to keep from tipping over by attempting to run faster and faster.
I hate to keep stepping on the clay feet of your political diety (I really don't) but the vaunted FDR did just that with Social Security:
The Social Security plan was that workers would pay for retirees, and, based on actuarial tables, those who died earlier than expected would add to the fund.
a. No one considered that life expectancy would increase?
b. No one considered that the balance of workers and retirees might change?
c. No one calculated the long-term costs?
d. Ida May Fuller, the first person to begin receiving benefits, in January, 1940, when she was 65- she lived to be 100. worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits. Social Security History
e. Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program's actuary. Social Security in the red this year - Washington Times
f. redeeming trust fund assets until reserves are exhausted in 2037, at which point tax income would be sufficient to pay about 75 percent of scheduled benefits through 2084. Trustees Report Summary
Wasn't this the economics whiz you suggested was "infallible"?
In fairness to Reagan, I think he realized he was just at the wrong time in history to push his view of limited govt. He did what was politically possible with stuff like block granting fed programs to states. He realized he had lost the public opinion battle on medicare, so he allowed taxes to rise to fund it and soc sec. The war on drugs and abortion were issues that appealed to factions within his big tent, so he threw them a bone, realizing neither were going anywhere.
There is a glaring fallacy in your post.
Simple put, growing government is akin to the drunk who tries to keep from tipping over by attempting to run faster and faster.
I hate to keep stepping on the clay feet of your political diety (I really don't) but the vaunted FDR did just that with Social Security:
The Social Security plan was that workers would pay for retirees, and, based on actuarial tables, those who died earlier than expected would add to the fund.
a. No one considered that life expectancy would increase?
b. No one considered that the balance of workers and retirees might change?
c. No one calculated the long-term costs?
d. Ida May Fuller, the first person to begin receiving benefits, in January, 1940, when she was 65- she lived to be 100. worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits. Social Security History
e. Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program's actuary. Social Security in the red this year - Washington Times
f. redeeming trust fund assets until reserves are exhausted in 2037, at which point tax income would be sufficient to pay about 75 percent of scheduled benefits through 2084. Trustees Report Summary
Wasn't this the economics whiz you suggested was "infallible"?
Social Security was not in the red last year.
Payroll tax collections plus interest earned on the securities held in the Trust Fund exceeded payouts to recipients.
This is one more rightwing myth that rightwingers find too pleasing to abandon.
while fascism was spreading throughout the globe, he...
The problem with putting one's trust in 'experts' is knowing which experts to choose. This really matters in the case of historians. Their trade is to select facts and then interpret them. A liberal historian worth his salt will be able to make a plausible case indicating that FDR was a wise as Solomon. A conservative historian will have no difficulty in portraying FDR as a naive fool. (My view as it happens). Your search for history devoid of a 'political slant' is doomed to fail.
Well this recent rating was by 238 of the top historians in the nation. Historians rating the presidents has also been going on since 1948 and since that time the ratings must involve over a 1000 historians. For a reputable historian to go too far out on a limb could be a disaster for his scholastic reputation and standing. Usually historians are somewhat agreed on facts and even the interpretation unless, and this is a biggie, they are writing a book and to make the book more salable to the public offer a different slant and some controversy.
For example, Charles Beard jarred the historical community with his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, and later Beard recanted some of his charges but the questionable stuff was probably included to sell his book.
As you rely on 'historians' to make up your mind for you, this should interest you:
"CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on yesterday discussing how historians and journalists would view *. They interviewed the usual lackeys such as Dan Bartlett and David Frum extolling chimpy's virtues, but my mouth dropped when Historian Douglas Brinkley called Reagan one of the 5 greatest presidents! Did I miss something? Is the fact that there was never a formal investigation into Iran Contra, mean that the president and his administration didn't pursue their RW agenda and cover it up? Was he possibly given credit for ending the cold war when in fact USSR's involvement in a war in Afghanistan did more to precipitate it? Am I missing something here?"
WTF? Historian Douglas Brinkley calls Reagan one of the Top 5 Greatest Presidents - Democratic Underground
"... Historian Douglas Brinkley called Reagan one of the 5 greatest presidents!"
That sound?
Me, chuckling, at you gnashing your teeth.
) would have motivation to appease both Hitler and Stalin to keep us out of the European conflict; however, after Pearl Harbor and inevitable war with Germany, it would be logical to ally with Russia rather than fight Hitler AND Stalin, and by association, Chiang Kai-shek. "The Russian newspapers during the last election [1932] published the photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt over the caption, 'The first communistic President of the United States,'" said Sen. Thomas Schall, a Republican from Minnesota. "Evidently the Russian newspapers had knowledge concerning the ultimate intent of the President, which had been carefully withheld from the voters in this country. In fact, the voters of the United States were meticulously misled as to such intentions." We found Schall's comments in the book, All But the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Critics, 1933-1939 .
PolitiFact | Obama right that Roosevelt was called a socialist and a communist
In any case, Social Security is probably one of FDR's greatest contributions to America. Of course, it was fought tooth and nail by Republicans, it was socialism, communism and made Americans dependent on government and all the anti Obama-care fear words being used today. As America slid into socialism and communism with Social Security, Medicare was added as was some hospitalization and disability insurance.
As the Tea-Party sign said, "Keep government out of my medicare."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved America. FDR saved not only capitalism in America, while fascism was spreading throughout the globe, he saved America from socialism. There was a very strong socialist movement in America. FDR was able to defuse that movement.
How FDR Saved Capitalism
Often thought of today as a "tax-and-spend" liberal, Roosevelt was in fact deeply committed to a balanced budget. He presented Congress with the Economy Act, a bill that put the federal government on a spending diet by cutting the salaries of federal employees, scaling back defense spending, and reducing veterans' pensions. Vets and military men briefly stalled the bill, but it passed on March 15.
WGBH American Experience . FDR . Domestic Politics | PBS
