My teacher, today, assigned me a debate tommorow. One side is discussing how it saved the economy, and did not go far enough, while I am debating it went too far and harmed the country/economy. I just got a PDF copy of the PIG New Deal book. Does anyone know any key parts to read that I could use - I don't think I can read it all by tommorow. Also, any "wow" facts or stats that I can use to win over my class, who is voting the winner. I don't want to get too complicated and make it go over the heads of my high school peers. Here is a quick checklist of points I made: SSA failed. unempployment got worse. per capita GDP got worse even cnsidering GDP includes government spending ( which was at an all time high then). deficit went up as spending did. didnt get out until after WWII. Depression hit its low 7 years into the new deal, when he decided to enter WWII. And give details of how hoover's new deal ahead gave him the idea, how shit fucked up then, and how he expanded on it, driving us further into debt. AAA starved Americans. unconstitutionality: setting prices and jailing people for making their own. tried adding justices to control everything.
Higgs has good stuff on this topic. And a quick google search on libertarianism and the great depression will give you more information as well. To be honest most folks now admit that Roosevelt's approach didn't solve the problem, but folks still excuse this by saying "at least he tried" But that's like saying you tried to cure a cold by drilling a hole through your left eye, but at least you tried.
Your response depends on how much time you have.
Historian Burton W. Folsom, Jr. and his wife argued that FDR did not end the Great Depression.
I suggest you stop waiting for responses and start reading the PIG to the Great Depression. That alone should be able to demolish all the arguments you will likely encounter.
Here's a fairly popular paper by Lee Ohanian and Harold Cole on the subject:
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/QR/QR2311.pdf
Or if you'd rather not read that, here's a lecture by Ohanian that basically covers the paper in a bit more digestable way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_YMR1Gk2JU
It's from a Real Business Cycle perspective, so I doubt you'd like all of it. The core idea is that productivity recovered fairly rapidly after the downturn, and presumably that would drive recovery in output as well... but it didn't, because unemployment and hours worked remained below trend. They argue that New Deal era high wage and cartelization policies under the NIRA gummed up the works, kept the markets from clearing and depressed recovery.
Amity Shlaes's book The Forgotten Man likely contains a bunch of data and stories from the working-man's perspective, some of which CJ Maloney shares in his review. And if you get into WWII, Steve Horwitz recently posted some historical data from a student of his concerning the falling living standards of Americans during the war.
Lessons from the Great Depression (by Lawrence Reed)
I definitely wouldn't cite RBC theory, especially when it comes to the great depression. It basically asserts that the great depression was caused by wide-scale and systematic laziness. Mike Mussa, a former chief economist at the IMF, and now at the Institute for International Economics, describes it as “the theory according to which the 1930s should be known not as the Great Depression, but the Great Vacation.”
I haven't actually read the article but your opponents, if they're somewhat informed, may use this against you.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
I thought that RBC theory merely said that technological innovation creates volatility and this volatitlity creates swings in the economy? Not necessarily that there is a greater demand for leisure?
C Le Master:My teacher, today, assigned me a debate tommorow. One side is discussing how it saved the economy, and did not go far enough, while I am debating it went too far and harmed the country/economy. I just got a PDF copy of the PIG New Deal book. Does anyone know any key parts to read that I could use - I don't think I can read it all by tommorow. Also, any "wow" facts or stats that I can use to win over my class, who is voting the winner. I don't want to get too complicated and make it go over the heads of my high school peers. Here is a quick checklist of points I made: SSA failed. unempployment got worse. per capita GDP got worse even cnsidering GDP includes government spending ( which was at an all time high then). deficit went up as spending did. didnt get out until after WWII. Depression hit its low 7 years into the new deal, when he decided to enter WWII. And give details of how hoover's new deal ahead gave him the idea, how shit fucked up then, and how he expanded on it, driving us further into debt. AAA starved Americans. unconstitutionality: setting prices and jailing people for making their own. tried adding justices to control everything.
How come the first time government massively intervened to "save" the economy was the first time there was a decade-long depression? The Fed was implemented in 1913, started engaging in open market operations in 1922, and in 1929 there was a great depression. Go figure. The stock market crashes of 1920 and 1987 were both worse than the one in 1929, yet they didn't turn into decade-long depressions. Because there the government didn't intervene massively. Neither were there decade-long depressions in the 1800s. If you get hit by a bullet and then you bleed, is your explanation going to be "that wound just randomly appeared, luckily that bullet hit me in the same place and stopped the bleeding. Being hit by bullets saves you."?
Also, explain the ridiculousness of the belief that war spending can save the economy. If that worked, why don't we just build a bunch of stuff we don't need and burn it, to get out of the current recession? During ww2 GDP went up by exactly the amount that the government spent by borrowing or inflating. It did not get the economy going, it merely delayed the depression until after ww2. After the war very free market policies were implemented that actually fixed the depression. But in hindsight that looks as though the depressions were fixed by countercyclical policies in the thirties, and not by free market policies in the forties.
I realize your debate was today, but in the interest of providing info for anyone who finds the thread in research or otherwise, Tom Woods talks a lot on this...
Thomas E. Woods: The Truth About American History (10) (specifically "The Great Depression, World War II, and American Prosperity, Part 1 & 2")
But how'd your debate go?