Know what never fails to make me smile?

It's the amazing fact that, no matter how much time passes between our New Deal posts... I'm just as pissed off and frustrated NOW as I was in 2008, and 2005, and 2003.

Ryan writes:

"But its a dangerous game for you to play given that, oh I don't know... INVENTING NUCLEAR BOMBS WAS NOT THE GOAL OF NEW DEAL. In other words New Deal failed in its' mandate, in its' promise, in its' intent - namely to mend the 20th century's greatest economic meltdown."

This is both the crux of our mutual disagreement and the basis of your argument.  Putting aside the latter (which we have both agreed cannot be proven true or false to either of our satisfaction), can we... just for a moment... look at the former?

It was never my (or Jambo's) intent to say that New Deal was a success because they helped invent the nuclear bomb.  I know you know this... yet you still imply it when you write things like this.  I have stated that New Deal succeeded in establishing a state-of-the-art infrastructure that allowed industrial, agricultural and scientific advances to push the US and Allied war effort to its ultimate goal.  Had TVA, Hoover Dam, the REA, the WPA, et al NOT accomplished what they did... the effort would still have been successful (at least I think so), but could have taken far longer than it did.

New Deal promised to fix the damage caused by the Crash of '29, and prevent its return in the future.  There has been no crash since, no depression since, and unemployment has never been that high again.  The national GDP, the inflation rate, the value of the dollar on the global market, indeed every economic indicator used, then and now, was back to pre-Crash levels by 1936... with the sole exception of unemployment which was still at more than 12% (and 8% higher than 1928).  Perhaps it would have risen back faster without New Deal... maybe ALL the indicators and indexes would have been back to normal and beyond by 1934, had Hoover gotten his win.  And perhaps there would still have been no depressions since.  I can't argue against that possibility.  And we CERTAINLY would have had a nuclear bomb... but not by 1945.  I am just as certain of that.  Nor would we have been out-producing the entire Axis war machine (BOTH theaters) in only 18 months after Pearl Harbor.

8 million jobs, a constantly growing economy from 1933 to 1941, and half a century of infrastructure that ensured American success in both peacetime and wartime.  Stability, security and support for the effort all say that the majority of Americans living through the era agree with me.

Please, bear in mind that I am NOT starting this again.  You misrepresented my position, and I wanted to clarify it.  Nothing more. I know New Deal was not started so we could develop a nuclear weapon.  Shockingly enough, that was never the goal of the War Department either... Oppie and Co. delivered a tool for them to use, but that tool was never the goal, any more than it was the goal of New Deal.