Did the New Deal Prolong the Great Depression?

Did the New Deal Prolong the Great Depression? Yes: Burton W. Folsom, Jr. * The Cabinet head had personal connections with the President. Made him bias towards FDR’s ideas * Unemployment was higher in 1939 than in 1931 after hoover left office * Govt went from running a surplus to a deficit * Seven Years of trade deficits cursed American GDP over the span of the New Deal * Welfare and Social Security kept lazy people lazy and made hard working people take pay cuts * The economy is self regulating and self healing; it would have fixed itself in time(not 12 years though) * IT was â€Å"Constraints School† The US economy was in a nose-dive for the first 6 years of FDR’s presidency, but he kept the Ether up and promised progress * Roosevelt Raised taxes across the board†¦ Sounds familiar to what is going on now†¦ damn Obama * If the war did not come about, FDR would not have lasted the 4 terms. NO: Roger Biles * FDR believed Taking a method and trying it un til it worked or didn’t. It it did, then keep doing it; if it didn’t admit that defeat and try something else. He used the Federal Gov’t to â€Å"help† regulate the economy(kind of like genetically engineering which also doesn’t work 100% of the time) * Unemployment decreased over the first 5 years of FDR’s presidency * The FDIC insured everyone’s money that is in the bank which is something that the US needed in 1929 * FDR created hope for everyone with Social Security, Welfare and Section 8 housing * He created the US postal service, rural electrification act, and rural mail act * Roosevelt changed the form of Gov’t in a short 12 years * He created â€Å"Wealth Tax† (sounds familiar AGAIN! which â€Å"affected Very few taxpayers† * He then Repealed the â€Å"Wealth Tax† because it didn’t work FDR’s new deal was a great idea in theory(so is Marxism), but wasn’t the best idea for the ti me. What he did is kind of what we are going through today: Promising change but not saying when, Increasing taxes and hoping it will help your deficit, and tried to intervene with the self regulating economy. The New Deal DID work, but only because WWII brought the need for production back to America; without that, the New Deal would have taked much much longer to work.