Ronald Reagan was a Better President than FDR

How the New Deal Hurt, Rather than helped the Great DepressionI. FDR Permanently Damages the U.S. DollarHere is the U.S. dollar in gold: In the 1930s, FDR took off the gold standard, destroying the value of dollar permanently. It never recovered from its drop and the only time the dollar dropped before that was in times of war, but it recovered after that. What FDR did was permanent. Also, note that in the 1980s, the value of the dollar went up. So rather than help, going off the gold hurt, the American economy. Eventually, the gold was resumed, but FDR had introduced a lack of clairty in the system. [1]As Mr. Higgs stated on FDR's policy with the gold:"Besides being theft, gold confiscation didn't work. The price of gold was increased from $20.67 to $35.00 per ounce, a 69% increase, but the domestic price level increased only 7% between 1933 and 1934, and over rest of the decade it hardly increased at all. FDR's devaluation provoked retaliation by other countries, further strangling international trade and throwing the world's economies further into depression." [2]And on agriculture he notes:"The objective was to raise farm commodity prices until they reached a much higher "parity" level. The millions who could hardly feed and clothe their families can be forgiven for questioning the nobility of a program designed to make food and fiber more expensive. Though this was called an "emergency" measure, no President since has seen fit to declare the emergency over."[2]II. Roosevelt's Terrible RegulationsThe National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 virtually nationalized industry. Never has there been any larger a bill of special interest. Big business was greatly supoported in the act and received less competition and higher prices in return. Labor unionists received government support and protection. Social workers who wanted to control over working conditions. Finally, major amounts of public spending. As Mr. Higgs notes:"The legislation allowed the President to license businesses or control imports to achieve the vaguely identified objectives of the act. Every industry had to have a code of fair competition. The codes contained provisions setting minimum wages, maximum hours, and "decent" working conditions. The policy rested on the dubious notion that what the country needed most was cartelized business, higher prices, less work, and steep labor costs."Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled the NRA as unconstitutional, which leads to the infamous packing of the Court story. III. Packing the CourtFDR packed the court to get what he wanted. Mr. Folsom reveals that:"Though the 1936 elections gave the Democrats overwhelming control of Congress, this was not enough for Roosevelt. He sought to purge those who were not fully behind his program. In particular, he could not forgive those who dared to oppose his unsuccessful proposal to pack the Supreme Court. He opposed long-serving and influential Democratic congressmen, favoring instead more pliant newcomers." [3]Basically, FDR wanted to pack the court so he could hopefully ram through unconstitutional legislation. He wanted to pass through bills that were completely illegal! The people were strongly against this action (and remember the power is with the people), so he could not pass it. Thank goodness that did not happen. [3]IV. Real GDP Does Not Improve: What ended the Great Depression? When can we conclude this? Late 1940s. Real GDP was all over the place in the 1930s, it went down, then up, then down again (the 1937 drop was a real drop in reaction to FDR's policies, please remember). Then World War 2 comes and real GDP rises, but remember what the professor in the video said: "By definition, military production output is not real wealth, wars destroy wealth rather than creating it."So what happens when the war ends? The Great Depression is still there. FDR did not fix it, because World War 2 hid what the economy really was and it crumbled after President Roosevelt's death.V. The Stock MarketIf Real GDP does not convince, perhaps the stock market will. When the stock market is doing well, the economy should be doing well. Here is the Dow Jones Industrial Average: As we can see, the stock market does not recover to where it was in the 1920s until the 1950s. It seems the U.S.'s years in World War 2 did little to create a massive recovery. What was the overall growth of Dow Jones at this time? Take a look: So despite FDR having almost a decade to fix the Depression, he is unable to and overall growth was at -50.3 at the time.Foreign PolicyMy opponent has aruged that FDR's policies led directly to the fall of the Axis Power, but is this true? Perhaps what FDR did was speed up defeat for the Axis, but that does not mean the Americans were completely 100% needed. Let's say Pearl Harbor was not bombed. The Germans were becoming vastly overstretched by the time Pearl Harbor did happen. Let's look at the whole Soviet front. The Soviets had massive numbers and firepower (coming from their population and industry) at the Battle of Stalingrad. No Americans there. The Soviets won what is widely considered the turning point of World War 2. Meanwhile, the same time the Allies were invading Northern Africa, the Germans had been defeated by the British and the Battle of El Alamein. Two key battles in the war, both won by Germany's opponents. I doubt it would be able to hold on the way it did. As for the Japanese, they were becoming stretched in a war with China and the European Powers. It captured vast amounts of territory, but could not defend it all. I have already explained that the USSR's inefficient command-directed economic system was terrible in my previous post. When Reaganomics arrived, they helped in total defeat of the Soviet economic system by giving the Soviets even more economic competition with free market capitalism which led to the fall of the USSR. Now we go to the Iran-Contra Affair, but do we really need to? My opponent even admitted that it is unclear if President Reagan was aware of what was happening, so we don't need to discuss this because there is not enough evidence about it the president's involvement. Now for Lebanon and we must remember that President Reagan is not responsible for the smallest of this. So when the bomb blew up, the president ordered a committee and it found that:"The commission's report found senior military officials responsible for security lapses and blamed the military chain of command for the disaster."So not President Reagan's fault. [4]Moral LeadershipLet's look at civil rights with FDR. Blacks were strongly hurt by President Roosevelt's policies. As Mr. Burton notes:"Minimum-wage laws proved a stumbling block to efforts by blacks to secure jobs. These laws prevented employers from undercutting unions by offering lower wages to nonunion members. Since blacks faced exclusion from many of the powerful unions, they were in effect frozen out."And:"Roosevelt was not much concerned with the effects of his programs on blacks. Indeed, he did little to support civil rights: he would not, e.g., support antilynching legislation. To do so might antagonize important Southern congressmen. Despite his seeming indifference to blacks, Roosevelt gained support among many members of the black community, in part owing to carefully calibrated publicity gestures by members of his administration."Not so pro-civil rights as we can see.[3]ConclusionI have proven FDR's policies hurt, rather than helped the economy. Real GDP, the dollar, and stock did not strongly improve under his presidency. The Depression lasted way longer. The Allies were already winning World War 2 when he entered. Blacks were hurt by his policies.Sources1. Cain, Herman and Rich Lowrie. 9-9-9 An Army of Davids. 2012.2. Higgs, Robert. "How FDR Made the Depression Worse." The Free Market XIII.2 (1995)3. Folsom, Burton, Jr. "New Deal or Raw Deal?" The Mises Review XIV.4 (2008)4. http://en.wikipedia.org...