Government Worsens Hard Times

Remember the story of the Great Depression.  Michael Medved does.  It goes something like this:

Capitalists and speculators went wild with greed in “The Roaring Twenties,” leading to a stock market crash and hard times. Banks closed, once prosperous workers sold apples on street-corners or became hobos in shanty-towns, while the Republican President Herbert Hoover did nothing for the destitute and suffering nation.

But soon enough, Happy Days Were Here Again.

Then FDR arrived on the scene, inspiring new hope with his golden words (“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) and a flurry of radical reform in his first hundred days in office. While conservatives squealed, this “new deal for the American people” improved the lives of everyone and got the economy humming again — just in time to face the challenges of World War II.

Only it wasn’t like that.  President Hoover was very busy expanding government to beat the Depression, and Roosevelt expanded his policies.  The unemployment rate hit 17 percent in 1931 and stayed high for the rest of the decade. “At no point during the 1930’s did unemployment go below 14%.”

So what went wrong.  Plenty.  And most of it was caused by government.  Medved tells the tale.

1. The New Deal prolonged the depression.
2. Recessions end quicker without government intervention.
3. In the old days, the advocates for the poor called for less government, not more.
4. There was more economic mobility when government was smaller.
5. The Great Society programs of the 1960s worsened the plight of the poor.
6. Government programs crowd out private charity.
7. “Nostalgia and political correctness cloud consciousness of the recent past.”

Go ahead.  Check out Medved’s article and read the whole thing.