FDR: Great President Or Socialist Disaster?
By Warner Todd Huston (04/21/04)
A new, monumental biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt has been released penned by Conrad Black that once again lionizes the WWII president. Naturally it ignores his failures and over emphasizes his achievements. So, it is time to remind everyone of the things that FDR did that damaged this country so badly that we are still dealing with the results today.
It should be remembered that FDR is far from the "Greatest American president". In fact it is difficult to claim him much of an American at all seeing as how he despised and worked to undermine nearly every institution that makes America America. Here are some of the facts:
Assault on capitalism
-The top tax rates were 91% on personal income and 95% on corporations1 this prolonged the Great Depression by decades and cynically confiscated the wealth of the working class and investment class alike.
- On April 7th, 1942, FDR declared that no one in America should be allowed to earn over $25,000 annually (equivalent to $260,000 in 2004 money).2 This was a typically socialist/communist inspired steal from the rich program. It also assured that the rich would not be able to invest in their businesses, save for the future, invest in the stock market or build homes much less spend on luxury items.
Social Security, just another vote pandering exercise
FDR admitted that the Social Security Act, which we are burdened with trying to "fix" now, was nothing but a vote pandering device. FDR said, "I guess you're right on the economics, but those taxes were never a problem of economics. They were politics all the way through." 3 This was a quote from FDR in reply to the fact that Social Security Payroll Taxes were a drag on the economy.
To illustrate the instability of this program the first person to get Social Security for the rest of her life was Ida fuller of Ludlow, Vermont. She garnered $20,000 in benefits but the amount she paid into the system before hand was $22 … TOTAL4.
Socialist "Work" Programs did NOT go to the poor
-The top 14 states that got WPA money were Western states NOT the states in the South that were poorest. Why? Because FDR needed western state votes and he already had the southern vote. 60% more New Deal money went to Western states than it did to Southerners. 5 So, the money of these New Deal Work programs never went to the Americans who needed it the most.
Blacks hardest hit
-FDR's FLSA bill (Fair Labor and Standards Act- June 14th, 1938) put more than 40,000 African Americans out of work upon its passing6. And most of FDR's other sweetheart deals for the various unions of the country similarly put blacks out of work because most of these unions worked exclusively to keep blacks out of their work force to support the white worker.
The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by decades
I can sum up the effects of FDR's New Deal policies no better than Jim Powell ….
"Regardless of the role of domestic versus international factors in ringing on the Great Depression, the New Deal did plenty to prolong high unemployment. New Deal policies were dubious when considered from the standpoint of their effects. After Americans had suffered through a catastrophic contraction for three years (1929-1933), FDR supported policies like the National industrial Recovery Act that promoted further contraction. His executive orders helped enforce higher consumer prices when millions of Americans were unemployed and needed bargains. FDR approved the destruction of food when people were hungry. FDR signed into law higher taxes for everybody, so consumers had less money to spend, and employers had less money with which to hire people-during the worst depression in American history. New Deal labor laws empowered the most racist unions to exclude blacks and had the effect of making it illegal for many employers to hire blacks. The power of the Federal Reserve became centralized, but this meant that the mistakes of a few people (members of the federal Reserve Board) were likely to harm millions across the United States; and indeed the Fed's mistakes were a major cause of the depression of 1938 as well as the monetary contraction of 1929-1933. After having throttled competition with the National Industrial Recovery Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Bituminous Coal Conservation Act, Robinson-Patman Act, Retail Price Maintenance Act, Federal Communications Act, Civil Aeronautics Act, high corporate taxes, and other measures, new Dealers posed as defenders of competition and filed a record number of antitrust lawsuits against private employers, one effect of which was to further discourage investment needed for growth and jobs." 7
And I am not even bringing up his fore knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, his deportation and imprisonment of thousands of ethnic Americans and his mishandling of the Soviet issue. Suffice to say, his best achievement seems to be his ability to get people to continue voting for him despite his constant failures on the economy, the law, the war and his ignorance of the Constitution of the United States.
For an American president FDR made a great member of the Kremlin.
1-Randolph Paul, Taxation in the United States, Boston: Little, Brown, 1954, pg 378, 380, 383
2-Paul, pg 272,280,282,301,302
3-Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny, by Frank Freidel. Published - Boston: Little, Brown, 1990, page 150
4-Personal Perspective- LJF Insurance Services, Southport, Conn.- pg 3
5-Leonard Arrington, "The new Deal in the West: A Preliminary Statistical inquiry," Pacific Historical Review, August 1969, pg 311-316
6-David Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the new Deal- Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2001, pg 101
7-Jim Powell, FDR'S Folly, How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, New York: Crown Forum Books, 2003, pg 263 -264
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