This morning, our statewide daily newspaper published a letter to the editor from a lefty rocket scientist. The sub-moron wrote:

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When FDR took office in 1933, unemployment hit 24.9 percent, nearly a quarter of the workforce. It fell to 21.7 percent in 1934 as the New Deal kicked in. By 1935, it was 20.1 percent, and by 1936, it fell to 16.9 percent. Unemployment continued to fall in 1937 to 14.3 percent. If this is not “an appreciable improvement in economic conditions,” then what is? >

FDR didn’t just manage to win the 1936 election. He won it in a landslide with 523 electoral votes. He carried all but eight electoral votes. It was only after FDR eased back on deficit spending in 1936 when he became overly concerned about balancing the budget that the economy fell back into a recession and unemployment rose to 19 percent in 1938. >

President Obama’s stimulus bill makes good economic sense and history supports him. >

Apparently, this idiot doesn’t really understand much about history. The New Deal was not an actual plan to stimulate the economy. It was a massive increase in government spending designed to make life a little better for people. The New Deal didn’t create private sector jobs. It created massive government public works projects that provided jobs for the unemployed. These weren’t real jobs in that they weren’t permanent, and the money used to create them was real. It was debt. They were temporary jobs designed to alleviate hard times for some people. That’s why the unemployment numbers went down.

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Of course, FDR was popular when it came re-election time. He had put a bunch of people back to work, even if it was temporarily. The average person didn’t know deficit spending from a hole in the wall. They didn’t care that the government would have to pay back the money borrowed to create the jobs. They just knew that their lives were a little better.

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Also, the writer failed to make the connection between that fact that the government decided to balance the budget and unemployment rose while the economy slipped back in a recession. It was the government money that was propping up the economy not any real economic improvement brought on by the FDR’s programs. Had the New Deal really helped the economy, it would have been able to sustain itself when the government tap was turned off.

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There are many economists predicting the exact same result from the Obama plan.

Posted by: Steve L. at 06:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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