Official Review - New Deal or Raw Deal by Burton W. Folsom

[RandyReadingRoundUp]

(9/10) Warning. This book is a bit dry, but if you can get through it the author does a great job of researching and reporting on the key components of the New Deal and FDR’s presidency. The 1930s was the first time in US history in which the federal government took such an active role in welfare for the poor, retirement for seniors, insurance on bank deposits, amongst other things. This is the period of time that the US became a centrally controlled partially socialist country. Before this point in time state governments had more power, individual communities and private citizens took care of welfare issues, and the federal government was at or near a balanced budget.

The country we know today was formed during the 1930s through FDR’s policies and the New Deal legislation. At no other point in the country’s history was government, society, and the economy changed so drastically. The author argues that some good things came out of the New Deal such as the removal of the Smoot-Hawley tariff that had previously destroyed exports and free trade, but the vast majority of the legislation did more harm than good and continues to cripple the country to this day. Some examples; social security, the WPA, the NRA, commodity price-fixing, farm subsidies, minimum wage, federal deficits, stealing gold from citizens, and many others.

A quick Google search will show you that most historians think the New Deal was a great success and helped end the Great Depression. This book resoundingly shows that this narrative is false. Even high-ranking Cabinet officials admitted nearly a decade into the New Deal that the programs were not working. In 1939, FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau admitted, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I say after eight years of this Administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”

This book does a great job of outlining point by point how the New Deal did not help end the Great Depression, but actually made things worse. World War II ended the Great Depression. Today, the government has wised up to this fact, hence the endless war machine that is the United States. It seems we’ve been in an endless war since 2001 with no true end in sight.