Dear Annie,
What a delightfully nostalgic take on economic history! It's so refreshing to see someone confidently rewrite the New Deal timeline while completely ignoring inconvenient economic realities.
First, let me gently correct your historical confusion: Medicare was created by LBJ in 1965, not FDR.¹ Perhaps you meant to reference Social Security? Though calling a Ponzi scheme that's currently headed toward insolvency a "success story" is certainly... optimistic.
Your fairy tale about FDR's tax policies "building the middle class" is particularly charming, considering most economists now acknowledge his policies actually prolonged the Great Depression by 7-10 years. UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian found that without FDR's interventions, the economy would have recovered by 1936 instead of dragging on until WWII manufacturing finally ended the misery.²
The real irony? America's middle class exploded in the 1950s-60s when tax rates were CUT and regulations reduced, not because of New Deal spending. Post-war prosperity came from unleashed private enterprise, technological innovation, and global manufacturing dominance – not government dependency programs.
But here's the most fascinating part of your economic wisdom: you're celebrating taking money from people who create jobs and businesses to fund government bureaucracies. Because nothing builds prosperity like reducing private investment and expanding federal dependency!
FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act allowed businesses to collude without antitrust prosecution while artificially inflating wages 25% above market rates, resulting in unemployment that was also 25% higher than it should have been.³ These policies "short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces" and kept the economy 27% below where it otherwise might have been.⁴
Between your historical revisionism and economic illiteracy, perhaps consider studying actual data instead of getting your policy analysis from feel-good memes. The middle class thrives when government gets out of the way, not when politicians promise to spend other people's money.
No rush learning basic economics though! I'm sure those depression-era breadlines were just FDR building character.
#EconomicHistory #NewDealMyths #GreatDepressionFacts #MiddleClassReality #TaxationVsGrowth #EconomicLiteracy #HistoryMatters #PolicyConsequences #FDRFacts #ProsperityPrinciples
Footnotes:
¹ Medicare was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 30, 1965, at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. Source: U.S. Senate Historical Office, "Medicare Signed into Law"
² Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, "New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 112, No. 4 (August 2004). The economists found that without FDR's policies, the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of 1943.
³ Cole and Ohanian calculated that in the three years following implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25% higher than they otherwise would have been, while unemployment was also 25% higher than it should have been given productivity gains.
⁴ UCLA economists found that the gross national product floundered at 27% below where it otherwise might have been due to artificially inflated wages and prices making goods and services too expensive for consumers. Source: UCLA Newsroom, "FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate"