Shattering the myth of the New Deal
Posted by Richard on June 18, 2010
Sometimes you can read a book that will change your mind on some fundamental issue.
Rarely, however, is there just one page that can undermine or destroy a widely held belief. But there is such a page — Page 77 of the book "Out of Work" by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway.
The widespread belief is that government intervention is the key to getting the country out of a serious economic downturn.
Read. The. Whole. Thing. The page to which Sowell refers contains a table of month-by-month unemployment rates for the 1930s. As Sowell explains, that table irrefutably demonstrates that it was massive government intervention in the market, first under Hoover and then under Roosevelt, that aborted the recovery after the 1929 market crash and led to a decade of double-digit unemployment.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
— George Santayana, The Life of Reason
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