More "bandwagon" economists...

I still maintain that FDR was not a socialist.

The New Deal created jobs in an environment that needed them desperately. Were they necessary jobs? Vital jobs? High-paying, high-skill jobs? No, they weren't. They were very basic, guaranteed $1200/year labor positions given to mainly blue-collar workers left unemployed by the depression of 1929. The WPA was the largest, as Ryan said.

Ryan's point seems to be that too much government intervention in the private sector is a bad thing... and I agree 100%. The "nationalization" of any facet of private industry is a bad thing, both for the industry in question, and the nation as a whole. Again, I agree with Ryan whole-heartedly.

My concern is that he has been overly influenced by those conservative voices out there that claim to "channel" Reagan's ghost in a manner that we can ALL know exactly what the Gipper would have done to fix the problem, regardless of how history shows us he DIDN'T fix the problem.

First off, I am more than willing to allow Ryan, or anyone else, to voice their opinion concerning the politics behind such programs as the CCC, or the WPA... but I do take exception to the generalization that because some ultra-conservative author/pundit quoted Louis Armstrong lyrics about "lazy days" with the WPA, then ALL WPA workers (and thus, their efforts) were a complete waste of time and money. That is both unfair, and tragically untrue.

There is a movement today among such personalities as Buchanan, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al to link Obama's promised "prosperity" with promises made in the 30's by FDR and his kind (Governor Hughie Long, D-LA comes to mind)... a movement to show that the New Deal was a failure from beginning to end. Ryan is going to have to be far more detailed in his analysis than simply quoting books he probably hasn't read... (ouch! That's going to leave a mark!)

Can he show me documentation that workers in the WPA were any more likely than workers in the railroad industry, or the manufacturing industry, or the retail industry of the time to take extra breaks? Work less than 100% of their capacity every working hour? Drag their feet? Can he tell me he didn't do it HIMSELF while we worked together five nights a week in Biloxi? PLEASE!

The WPA built the Golden Gate Bridge, and did it under budget. They built the Rulo Bridge across the Mississippi River to Tennessee at Memphis that both James and I recall as "difficult to navigate". They built such enduring American vacation spots as the Black Hills National Monument, White Sands National Park, and the Blue Ridge National Parkway. They built each and every lock still functioning on the Mississippi River, as well as the locks at Sault Ste Marie (the Soo Locks), Michigan. They even built Camp David.

I have WPA tools in my workshop, and had two very close and dear relatives work for the New Deal "workfare" programs (only one of which was a Democrat, by the way)... gripe about the politics all you want, but the WPA got the work done and done well, and that is the testament I have to offer in regards to whether or not the WPA was a success or not. It did everything it was INTENDED to do... put 3.3 million men and women, both black and white, to work for a fair wage. HERE are my sources.

My second point is a bit more problematic. While we have the tangible results of the New Deal to debate over today, what we DON'T have is any evidence of what would have happened otherwise. We can point fingers at such obvious handicaps to an economy as high taxes, tariffs and excise costs as contributors to the duration of the crisis, and we would probably be correct in our observations... but simply saying that "liberal" policies prolonged the problem is neither measurable nor specific, and thus contributes nothing to the debate.

For every conservative that says that FDR's New Deal "prolonged" or "extended" the depression, I can show an example of "conservative" policy that contributed to the "crash" in the first place. Had the Feds "regulated" speculative stock prices (as they do now through the SEC) and limited the amount of "capital" brokers could extend into marginal buying and selling, the Crash of '29 wouldn't have happened at all. The problem is simply that the Feds WEREN'T regulating, and the Crash DID happen... so all the "what-ifs" in the world mean nothing. Hoover had a "hands-off" approach BEFORE the crash, and maintained a "hands-off" approach after the crash... and that cost the GOP 20 years of Executive leadership BECAUSE the Democrats not only promised to do SOMETHING, they DID SOMETHING.

On a further note, I find it troubling that so few "conservatives" recognize that Reagan is the President that implemented the "regulations" restricting oil price speculation, ensuring a moderated (if slightly elevated) cost per barrel of crude oil in 1982. That regulation was removed in 2002, when Bush revoked the regulations... and we have ALL seen the "free market" results of that action, haven't we? Every conservative pundit out there calling for more drilling and more refining, when the AMOUNT of oil on the market never went DOWN, it only went up! It wasn't a scarcity of oil that was driving crude prices to $150/barrel... it was the "free market" and its use of unregulated speculative pricing.

Some amount of "regulation" is vital to an economy of this size and scope. So many pundits on the radio and in the conservative press today want a return to the "gold standard" and the removal of the Federal Reserve (it was this plank that I think caused Ron Paul his credibility, even more than his call for the removal of the IRS). The problem is, the US economy is now so HUGE that all the gold reserves currently in existence aren't enough to back the amount of US currency already in circulation! To "back" the bills we already have out, we'd have to increase the buying power of a ONE DOLLAR bill by 650%, with almost NO increase in gold reserves available to us! The only way to do that is to destroy 6 out of every 10 dollars outstanding right now, and that equals INFLATION on a scale unknown even to survivors of the Great Depression. Doubt me? Look HERE.

The New Deal had flaws, and there were certainly aspects of it that didn't work... but to label it as a "failure" completely is an injustice to both history and the men and women that benefited from the efforts involved. Lest we forget, the people most directly effected by the New Deal are the people we refer to today as the "Greatest Generation". Is this a coincidence?