rssThe Remembered Man
Monday, March 09, 2009 at 8:52 am
- 3 Comments
Jonathan Chait has a good, long review of three books about the New Deal that can be read next to my story last month on the influence of Amity Shlaes and her revisionist history, “The Forgotten Man,” among Republicans.
At one point in her book, in fact, Shlaes actually concedes that Roosevelt’s Keynesian experiment succeeded when he tried it. “The spending was so dramatic that, finally, it functioned as Keynes … had hoped it would,” she writes about 1936, “Within a year unemployment would drop from 22 percent to 14 percent.” So Keynesian policy worked, and the main fiscal problem with the New Deal was that Roosevelt made too many concessions to the right. Here we are in agreement. So can conservatives stop carrying around The Forgotten Man like it’s Mao’s Little Red Book? Can we all go home now?
The problem with the Republican arguments for a combination of deep tax cuts and spending cuts is that no one can point to a recession that this program ended. Tax cuts and spending, yes. Tax increases and meddling with interest rates, yes. But the homespun wisdom of Republicans like Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), that the government should cut back spending just like an average family is doing, is not backed up by anything.
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3 Comments
Comment posted March 11, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
I'll name one: 1920-1921 under Warren Harding:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/01/har…
Comment posted March 11, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
I'm reading “The Forgotten Man”. I'm on page 139. I can't say how much more I will read or if I will finish the book. To say that I'm underwhelmed would be an understatement. It's dull. I expected some real economic information about the underpinnings and policy decisions made in the twenties that set the stage for the depression, and how FDR's actions helped or hurt the possibility of economic recovery, you know, policy A leads to B which causes C, that sort of thing. Yet all I'm getting is a continuous rambling about this person and so-and-so who would end up working in the Roosevelt government who had some misplaced admiration of socialism and or Stalin. She has mentioned so many names that I can't keep them all straight. It's a virtual commie love-fest, if Mrs Shlaes is to be believed. She's almost McCarthyist in the zeal in which she names names. I will continue to read the book, but I can already say that you will get more usefull information from 40 or so pages devoted to this time period in the fun and excellent “The Great Game” than from Mrs. Shlaes effort.
Comment posted March 12, 2009 @ 5:49 am
I'm reading “The Forgotten Man”. I'm on page 139. I can't say how much more I will read or if I will finish the book. To say that I'm underwhelmed would be an understatement. It's dull. I expected some real economic information about the underpinnings and policy decisions made in the twenties that set the stage for the depression, and how FDR's actions helped or hurt the possibility of economic recovery, you know, policy A leads to B which causes C, that sort of thing. Yet all I'm getting is a continuous rambling about this person and so-and-so who would end up working in the Roosevelt government who had some misplaced admiration of socialism and or Stalin. She has mentioned so many names that I can't keep them all straight. It's a virtual commie love-fest, if Mrs Shlaes is to be believed. She's almost McCarthyist in the zeal in which she names names. I will continue to read the book, but I can already say that you will get more usefull information from 40 or so pages devoted to this time period in the fun and excellent “The Great Game” than from Mrs. Shlaes effort.
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