How Government Expansion Worsens Hard Times

by Michael Medved - October 24th, 2007 - Townhall.com

In 1931, in some of the darkest days of the great depression and the middle of the Hoover administration, the national unemployment rate stood at 17.4%. Seven years later, after more than five years of FDR and literally hundreds of wildly ambitious new government programs, after more than doubling federal spending, the national unemployment rate stood at --- 17.4%! As economist Jim Powell, author of the devastating book “FDR’s Folly” points out: “From 1934 to 1940, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2%. At no point during the 1930’s did unemployment go below 14%. Even in 1941, amidst the military buildup for World War II, 9.9% of American workers were unemployed. Living standards remained depressed until after the war.”

In his celebrated Inaugural Address of March 4, 1933, FDR unequivocally declared: “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.” For the President and his economic planners, the task of putting people to work did remain an unsolvable problem –until world conflict led to sixteen million Americans leaving the work force for the military, and others finding new jobs in humming defense plants. Considering Roosevelt’s self-proclaimed priorities, the persistence of devastating unemployment rates (in an era when the typical family relied on only one wage earner and women for the most part remained uninvolved in the work force) should alone identify the New Deal as a wretched, ill-conceived failure.

Since the New Deal success is based on lies, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Democrat propensity to lie is based on recognition that everything they believe is a lie. It is certainly true that Democrat love for socialism is based on lies. I frequently hear hard core Democrats argue that socialism has never been tried. It has, and it has failed every time. Rejection of this is simply rejection of reality.

This article by Michael Medved is an important history lesson that more people need to understand.