The New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

Okay Rebuttals: “This is my opponent's only argument for this debate. As I have stated before, the purpose of this round is to solely refute the opposing argument and not expand or defend on your own case.” I ask that the audience look to round one and consider that my opponent has BOP. He never claimed that this was only for rebuttals. Rebuttals in fact implies expanding on points, otherwise it would be called a contradiction and not a rebuttal. You have to show more than disagreeing with an opponent and the opposite view; you have to show how your opponent is wrong in a debate, requiring expansion. My opponent is clearly trying to change the debate rules here, with all due respect. I think this point ought to be ignored. Audience, your choice. Correlation is Not Causation: First if all, my opponents entire case makes a causation fallacy. His entire case is negated by the fact that correlation is not causation. Recall that my opponents case relies on causation data, and instead cherry-picks evidence, and proceeds to Texas sharp-shoot why the New Deal was bad. He points out to minimum wage, agriculture, the gold standard, and then jobs Roosevelt created and WW2. I would like to point out, that the New Deal had more than just these elements within it. So even if he were correct that all of these elements within the New Deal were bad for the economy, that does not mean that the New Deal it's self was bad, or even worsening the Great Depression. He fundamentally misses one point: Banking reforms and how they worked. Under the New Deal, Bank Runs practically ceased. This alone makes the New Deal a success. Before the New Deal, credit crunches would lead to people having a lack of faith in banks, bank runs ensue, and then the defaulting of a bank. It destabilized the economy, and was a massive source for the Great Depression's problems. The New Deal after it was passed (1933) had less than 10 fail per year. Before over 500 would fail, causing economic issues. -- http://en.wikipedia.org... Austrian Economics: My opponent is espousing the Austrian School of Economic Theory. (Gold standard is NOT accepted in the doctrine of Neoclassical Economics nor Kenysian, Milton Friedman states "A real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development." and then stated “Let me emphasize that this note is not a plea for a return to a gold standard.... I regard a return to a gold standard as neither desirable nor feasible”) My opponent implies in his rebuttal that the gold standard would have been a better solution with little/no government involvement. Austrian economics is heterodox-ideology and is in fact rejected by most economists for it's rejection of quantitative analysis of any kind. It utilizes a priori assumptions that today are rejected (and in some cases outright false...their understanding of business cycles for instance) My opponent also states: “In the case of a war economy, we do not look at standard economic terms like unemployment (clearly declining due to the draft) and real GDP (clearly rising due to war production). We look at how well the private economy is doing specifically with investments and expansion. They were further killed with high taxes rates at 79% and higher.” This is another indicator. While real GDP and Unemployment are certainly not perfect, they're the best measurements we have. My opponent claims GDP raises due to production, sure, but the War would have drained the economy as well, so GDP would be legit to still use here. Wars are costly things... You cannot look to investment because the markets in Europe and the War would also have an impact. Investors do not like to invest when the world is greatly unstable brought on by the war. My opponents stats are blatantly misleading. Again, correlation is not causation. For more, see: http://en.wikipedia.org... and http://en.wikipedia.org... **Note: I already pointed out that to prevent these fringe groups to prevent over-complicating this debate, we ought to keep to mainstream economic theory. This is not a mainstream economic theory, and if that is the case, why don't we add Marxists for instance into this debate? Because their ideology is rejected and not inline with what we observe in the economy today. Jobs My opponent concedes that jobs were in fact created by the New Deal. The fact that the administration was riddled with corruption does not in anyway mean that the Jobs themselves were illegitimate. It just means that the administration was poorly ran, which is a whole other issue entirely. In fact, he has to agree that jobs were created in the first place to even begin to criticize this administration in the first place. He then talks about why Roosevelt was so loved was because of the WPA propaganda... this has nothing to do with the New Deal. This point ought to be ignored. The only time the New Deal started having any problems was in 1937-38 with a “mini-recession” (see here: http://www.proprofs.com...) Otherwise the trend even after WW2 was in decline, and this occurred during the war as well. HistoryGenius makes a mistake here: if unemployment was caused by the war, then why the recession? If that was the case, this would have never of happened.) This does illustrate, along with my opponents points, that jobs were correlated with the New Deal. My opponent has to concede this first before even being able to make these points anyways! And Finally, Economic Consensus: -- In statistics, 95% confidence is the norm. This in no way means that the study is nullified. It just means that the standard error is within 0.05 points. (it's like saying “give or take a half point”). (see: http://en.wikipedia.org...) We do this in statistics when we take a sample, because it is unfeasable to ask everyone for their opinions and/or they refuse/do not want to participate. -- The information is not too old, it's the most up to date opinion survey I could find. Eventually, when expert consensus occurs surveys are generally stopped because it's literally telling the industry what it already knows. Claiming we have no idea what the expert opinion is in light of this survey is an appeal to ignorance and should be ignored. We do in fact know what economists think. (see:http://www.jstor.org...) -- Finally, the Economics Directory is an International Organization uniting economic historians across the globe. It has operations in Africa, North America, Asia, etc... Over 1,000 people attend it's congresses, and even has other international organizations subscribed to it. They not only have historian economists, but economists themselves and the survey already noted this. There is no reason to claim that this was not a broad survey done. It was. (see: http://www.ieha-wehc.org... and http://en.wikipedia.org...) This shows that expert opinions of Friedman and Keynes, or even Paul Krugmen is legit evidence with consensus, this is the only reason why my opponent is rejecting this. My opponents case is therefore rejected. The New Deal certainly did not prolong/extend the Great Depression. I remind the audience, that my opponent put forth no causational data, which is what he needs in order to meet his BOP. He needs quantitative data, not qualitative data that Austrian Economics gives him. Otherwise, he makes nothing but bare assertions.