New Deal

[[Image:TVA.jpg|thumb|right|thumb|165px|Tennessee Valley Authority logo, one of the New Deal's many kickass alphabet soup agencies]]
[[File:Emblem of North Korea.svg|thumb|right|thumb|165px|Official logo of [[North Korea]]. Note the similarity.{{efn|No, you say? You aren't alone. I bet you don't taste the [[Kool-Aid]]/[[water fluoridation|fluoride in the water]] either.}}]]
{{Economics}}
{{cquote|The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try ''something''.|||Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaigning in May 1932<ref>[https://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/academics/research/faculty-research/new-deal/roosevelt-speeches/fr052232.htm Franklin D. Roosevelt Speeches: Oglethorpe University Address] by Franklin D. Roosevelt (May 22, 1932) ''Pepperdine School of Public Policy''.</ref>}}
The '''New Deal''' was a vast array of policies enacted in the [[United States]] under president [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]], beginning in 1933, to reverse the deep economic slowdown called the [[Great Depression]]. [[Social Security]] (insurance against outliving one's job income) was mandated. Bank "holidays" were decreed{{efn|30,000 banks, many of them "mom n' pop" neighbourhood operations, were ordered closed. Three days later when the holiday was lifted, less than half survived.<ref>''Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929-1940'' by James S. Olson (2001) Greenwood Press. ISBN 0521386810.</ref>{{rp|26}} As of 2021, there are less than 5,000 banks and 72,166 branches in the US.<ref>[https://www.statista.com/statistics/184536/number-of-fdic-insured-us-commercial-bank-institutions/ Number of FDIC-insured commercial banks in the United States from 2000 to 2021] (2023) ''Statista''.</ref>}} in order to prevent a run on banks while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) began to insure deposits. [[Gold]] was called in by the [[Federal Reserve]]. A whole alphabet soup of new government agencies such as the BPA, WPA, PWA, FDIC, RFC, TVA, NRA, AAA and CCC were created by FDR to provide employment by building roads, bridges, dams, and parks until [[WWII]] put a stop on it. Overall, the New Deal was highly successful in promoting economic growth and recovery from the Great Depression; the recovery began almost immediately after Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933 on the expectation that he would in fact fulfill his election promises.<ref name=rauchway1>"The New Deal" by Eric Rauchway. In: ''Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past'', edited by Kevin M. Kruse & Julian E. Zelizer (2022) Basic Books. ISBN 1541601394. Pages 141-153.</ref>{{rp|143-146}}

According to Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, the 1911 {{wpl|Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire}} in New York City was "the day the New Deal was born." Perkins had been employed to investigate workplace safety starting in 1910, and had been a witness to the fire.<ref>[https://francesperkinscenter.org/learn/her-life/ The Woman Behind the New Deal] ''Frances Perkins Center''.</ref>

==Effectiveness==
The staying power of New Deal policies was decidedly mixed. One key piece of legislation, the head-scratching National Industrial Recovery Act, was struck down by the [[Supreme Court]] in May 1935, one month before it was set to expire anyway. Part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act was also struck down in 1936. FDR threatened to [[Court-packing|expand the Supreme Court]] with new appointees in response, which led to the sitting justices having a change of heart and upholding later New Deal legislation, so the threatened expansion of the court never actually took place. The Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided employment in parks and forestry work to unemployed young adults, was one of the most popular New Deal programs but was abandoned at the start of World War II when young adults were press-ganged once the government decided it had [[Axis|bigger priorities]].  

Also abandoned at the start of WWII were the Works Progress Administration and the Public Works Administration.  On the other hand, the Tennessee Valley Authority, another popular agency that brought rural electrification to much of [[the South]]east, continues to this day. Three key pieces of the New Deal had wide-reaching and long-lasting effects: Social Security; the Glass-Steagall Act, which regulated banking{{efn|Glass-Steagall regulated the quality and types of assets bank owners could hold the bank's capitalization in, and not so much as the creditworthiness of loans a bank could make with depositor's money. This is a common misperception about the effect of the repeal of Glass-Steagall had in the [[Great Recession|2008 crash]].}} and established the FDIC; and the Wagner Act (or National Labor Relations Act), which provided a governmental mechanism through which employee organization into [[labor union]]s could take place.

American [[conservatives]] (and especially [[libertarians]]), then and now, hate ''every'' facet of the New Deal, and, indeed, they claim that FDR's policies did nothing to prevent a [[Roosevelt Recession|second slowdown]] beginning in 1937,{{efn|However, many economists believe that FDR's attempt to balance the budget starting in 1936 was the actual cause of the recession of 1937.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20170208101851/http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/5EA33403F82E754A852576B800428363 The Limited Lessons of 1937] by Joseph J. Thorndike (January 21, 2010) ''Tax History Project'' (archived from February 8, 2017).</ref>}} and that the (oh, the [[irony]]!) unprecedented deficit spending and full employment required to wage the total war of World War II was finally sufficient to get America into economic recovery. Also ironic was that at least one New Deal agency, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, came about during the [[Herbert Hoover]] administration and not FDR's. Banning the private possession of gold, however, was just stupid and was not repealed until 1975&nbsp;— conservative opponents of the New Deal [[stopped clock|do have a point]] on that one.

Today, some self-styled progressives are enamoured of the New Deal and [[Good old days|look back nostalgically]] on the Roosevelt years as some kind of [[golden age]], without acknowledging the occasional mishaps. The New Deal ''was'' a revolutionary policy, improving the life of the common citizen, and for providing jobs for the unemployed, legal protection for labor unionists, regulations on Wall Street, more involvement for women workers, modern utilities for rural America, living wages for the working [[poor]], and price stability for the family farmer. It was the first program to put [[African Americans]] under full-fledged government jobs under the New Deal, which foreshadowed the [[Civil Rights movement]], and [[LBJ]]'s Great Society, which helped tackle poverty, was inspired by the New Deal. However, its implementation was shaky at times, experimental at first, and some programs needed to be changed (or just dropped altogether) so it could work more efficiently. Many were alarmed at the scrapping of certain programs in favour of fueling the [[Vietnam War]] effort, and many would argue that the New Deal didn't go far enough, but it still went further than any other policy has ever done since then.

Despite the overall success of the New Deal, it was burdened by the necessity of northern [[Democrats]] making an alliance of with [[racist]] southern [[Dixiecrats]], because [[Republicans]] were almost entirely opposed to the New Deal. The consequences of political brokering were such that many benefits, while not explicitly race-based, were nonetheless racially-biased against African Americans. Two key elements of that bias were:<ref>''When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America'' by Ira Katznelson (2006) W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393052133.</ref>{{rp|14-24}}
#The exclusion from Social Security of farm workers and domestic servants (maids). At the time, these occupations were dominated by African Americans, particularly in the South.
#The local control of federal funds, which meant that White racists decided who was eligible for funds in most cases.

==New Deal denialism==
"New Deal [[denialism]]" is a term coined by [[historian]] Eric Rauchway in response to the start of the "New Deal made the Depression worse!" [[myth]] by [[Historical revisionism|revisionist]] journalist [[Amity Shlaes]].<ref name=rauchway2>[http://edgeofthewest.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/newdealfordissent.pdf New Deal Denialism] by Eric Rauchway (Winter 2010) ''Dissent''.</ref> Naturally, this was parroted by [[George Will]] and sufficiently distorted by [[Fox News]] as the "consensus" among "historians."<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rBiGj2kbE Fox News: Historians "Agree" That FDR Prolonged the Depression] (Dec 24, 2008) ''YouTube''.</ref> Just in time to squawk about the [[ARRA|stimulus package]]! In reality, however, three-quarters of historians don't believe that the New Deal prolonged and deepened the Great Depression. There is no consensus among economists as to whether the New Deal worked or not, however.<ref>[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/01/economists-v-hi.html Economists v. Historians on the New Deal and the Great Depression] by Alex Tabarrok (January 6, 2009 at 11:23 am) ''Marginal Revolution''.</ref>

Of course, Republicans ''have'' to re-write the history of the New Deal or all their ''[[laissez-faire]]'' bloviating falls flat. If the biggest [[John Maynard Keynes|Keynesian]] experiment in American history succeeded, it undercuts all their arguments that government can never do anything right (we mean, just look at the DMV).{{efn|As an aside: This is not entirely the case as Keynes actually recommended [[austerity]], which is considered to be a rather conservative economic policy, during good times to keep bubbles from building and to help pay off the debt accrued by the government in its effort to get the economy out of a [[recession]]&nbsp;— this countercyclical policy was central to his ideas, but many politicians who employ Keynesian economic policy don't adhere to it.}} Here are the most oft-repeated denialist [[talking point]]s and why they're wrong (most of which Rauchway goes into great depth about):<ref name=rauchway2/>
#"The often overlooked Depression of 1920 only took one year to resolve itself with no government intervention." (See the [[Depression of 1920]] page.)
#[[cherry-picking|Cherry-picked]] statistics a la Shlaes. (Shlaes and Company like to cite unemployment [[statistics]] that ''exclude'' [[government]] jobs for no other reason than that they [[No True Scotsman|weren't "real" jobs]]. Rauchway goes into detail about how Shlaes uses unreliable and [[Pseudostatistics|non-standard statistics]] that no honest historians or economists would use to "prove" her case. The ironic thing is, even using the least flattering statistics, it still shows that economic conditions improved under FDR.)
##As a corollary, Senator Chuck Grassley claimed in 2019 that the New Deal "hurt jobs" as a [[rationalization]] for opposing the proposed [[Green New Deal]], but the "hurt jobs" claim is also disproven by [[statistics]].<ref name=rauchway1/>{{rp|143-148}}
#"The NRA was [[Red-baiting|communism]]!" (The favourite target of anti-New Dealers. The National Recovery Administration was a disaster, and even FDR recognized that. It became a hotbed of crony [[capitalism]] through legalized cartels that were allowed to fix prices, etc. It's true that the economy might have recovered faster without the NRA, but it was scrapped by 1935 and by 1936, [[GDP]] was back to pre-crash levels anyway. The NRA was only a major policy for two years.)
#"It was World War II that got us out of the Great Depression, not the New Deal/all that government spending!" (Partially ''true''. By 1936, GDP had recovered to where it was in 1929, though unemployment was still lagging behind it. Technically, we were no longer in a "depression" or "[[recession]]" at that point. As noted above, Republicans, as well as some in Roosevelt's cabinet, called for austerity measures. FDR complied and attempted to balance the budget, raise [[tax]]es, and they allowed the Fed to run a contractionary policy. In 1937, the Roosevelt Recession rolled around and the economy dipped, but never back to the depths it had before. In fact, we were exiting the Depression by the time the [[Japan]]ese hit [[Pearl Harbor]]. And for those who make the latter argument above, well, it's just damned stupid and incoherent. What do you call all the ''spending'' we did during WWII?!{{efn|It's referred to as "[[Ronald Reagan|military Keynesianism]]", by the way.}}

And the "FDR turned a recession into a depression" line is so removed from [[reality]] as to not even be worth responding to.

==See also==
*[[Commerce Clause]]
*[[Historical revisionism]] as a general phenomenon of which New Deal denialism can be seen as a variant.
*[[Lost Cause of the South]] proponents would also like to rewrite history.
*[[Rachel Carson]]; the “Rachel was wrong!” (about [[DDT]]) shtick also has wingers trying to rewrite history to better suit their views.

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note|2}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Economics]]
[[Category:Great Depression]]
[[Category:Pseudohistory]]
[[Category:Racism]]
[[Category:Social liberalism]]
[[Category:United States history]]

Categories: Economics, Great Depression, Pseudohistory, Racism, Social liberalism, United States history