Frankly, I don’t know how you can say that with a straight face.
The postwar economy suffered from shortages of housing and consumer goods, there were massive labor labor problems and high inflation. And while any president would have had to deal with these issues, Truman did so in a way that wasn’t what you’d call “sophisticated.” In fact it displayed the same autocratic tendencies I alluded to earlier.
When coal miners went on strike Truman threatened to draft them into the army and keep them in the mines. Same with the railroad workers. And the 1952 steel strike led him to seize control of several mills - the Supreme Court overturned this action as it was blatantly unconstitutional.
And of course, when Truman left office the economy wasn’t in great shape - it went into recession in early 1953 and remained there for nearly a year.
So given that you ought to support your assertion better or just drop it.
His action in 1952 was a response to the fact that we were already in another war.
And of course there were shortages of consumer goods in the immediate postwar period. It took time for the factories to retool, and as I mentioned, there was pent up demand. My father got special access to a car in 1946 due to him working in UN security in New York.
Hereis the Wiki article on the post WW I recession. Truman, in the TV interviews that became Speaking Freely, particularly mentioned it. As a returning WW I veteran without a lot of business sense, it no doubt hit him hard, though he did not make it a personal issue.
As for the post WW II era, here is the blurb from a book about it from here
Recessionary periods usually are associated with lower birth rates, certainly not the case there. BTW, you might not have noticed that you contradicted yourself. Recessions don’t usually involve shortages of consumer goods, which you can confirm by checking your local mall or car dealer. Calling a 1952 recession a postwar recession is like linking our current recession to 9/11. Try again.
Yes Roosevelt was the best President of the 20th century. Of course you seem to be confusing Franklin with Theodore.
FDR did not end the depression but he did do a fairly good job keeping the country afloat during it without giving in to the horrors of Fascism and Communism. The economy was mostly recovered before we entered WWII of course but it was WWII that ended the World Wide Depression. Manufacturing was up leading up to Pearl Harbor as we were making and selling goods to countries that were already at war.
I don’t think anyone can fairly claim that the New Deal ended the depression.
Moderator’s Warning: Accusing another poster of lying is against the rules in Great Debates. Don’t do that again (and please tone it down a notch in general).
So what - your reaction to my post was to attempt to pick nits?
My main point was that Truman attacked economic problems in a heavy handed and unsophisticated fashion - putting the lie to your assertion that he was more sophisticated in this area than Roosevelt.
BTW, I didn’t call the recession of 1953 a postwar recession - I simply said the economy at the end of the Truman administration had problems, which is undeniable.
No, I said that economic theory was more sophisticated. If Truman ever studied economics, it escaped me. He sold hats. Badly. I agree that him ending the strike was heavy handed, but that had nothing to do with avoiding a postwar recession.
The facts are that, unlike after WW I, there was no immediate recession and only a mild one a few years later. I have no idea if he was heavy handed or not in preventing one - whatever he did, it worked. I’m sure the country being heavily involved in commerce with a badly damaged Europe helped also.
You are correct, I broke the rule. I am sorry and repentant. I will not do it again. I do not understand the “tone it down a notch in general” however. Truly I don’t.
I would also like to see equal application of the rules. Someone in this thread misquoted and thereby mocked my username, and as a result, insulted me by calling me The Sacred Stone.
A lot. As did sales of weaponry before and throughout the war to various allied powers. The U.S. came through the war as the arms dealer to the world, and suffered relatively few casualties and almost no infrastructure damage. It emerged from the war as an international titan economically, and that plus the start of major global trade liberalization caused the massive expansion in foreign trade helped recover the economy and pay down the war debt.
Also, WWII turned women into workers, and after the war far more of them entered the work force, which created a boom in labor resources.
50% growth is pretty damn good. You can see it shrunk a tiny bit again in '37 when Roosevelt thought it was time to balance the budget and stop inflation (what little there was), but it was a minor blip. It was him getting more of a feel for the wheel. '39 and '40 saw massive GDP growth as well (this was before the war exports really picked up). 41-45 was another massive 50% growth, and remember FDR was still at the wheel. His all-out command economy technique worked wonders then.
Overall, I really don’t see ANY justification for saying “he made the Depression worse.” That’s ridiculous. There is good reason to say, “he didn’t fix the depression as quickly as possible.” But there is even more reason to say, “if he knew in '32 what he knew in '45 (or '39), he would’ve done the job even better.” For all his experimenting, that guy succeeded in a lot of learning. Everyone benefited from the experiments.
In general, the command-economy style worked incredibly well in 33-45 in the US, and it worked great in the USSR and Germany. Free-marketers hate this truth for some reason, however. Command economies get you out of depressions fast, even though the assiduousness of the bureaucracy on which they depend peters out in the long term.
Yes, FDR did prolong the Depression. By 1937, the economy had improved somewhat, and at the behest of conservatives, FDR tried to balance the budget by decreasing federal spending and cutting taxes. The economy promptly sank again, and didn’t improve until FDR abandoned the demands of conservatives in Congress, and increased spending on public works programs. Paul Krugman explains it here.
I admit it is easy to get caught up in partisan bickering these days, so in the interest of fairness, I readily admit that Democrats have been lock step with the Republicans concerning most policy issues, including social security. The overtaxing of Americans to fund social security began under the Reagan administration. The justification for requiring Americans with low and modest incomes to pay the hefty social security tax in advance was the scare that funds wouldn’t meet the needs of an aging population. Since then, the government has collected substantially more revenue than it has paid out in benefits, but the surplus has not been banked for future payments. It has been used to fill budget gaps caused by tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The panic over social security funding in the 1980s seems to have been overstated.
I agree It is important to evaluate the past honestly. Roosevelt was far from perfect. He expanded executive power and used his power for political expediency and to defy Congress. But the revisionists have their own political motives for trying to discredit every aspect of Roosevelt’s presidency.
The difference in Paul Kurgman saying that FDR prolonged the Depression and right wingers saying it is a big one. Krugman is saying that FDR should have spent more with more government programs and should have never succumbed to the advice he was getting to slow down and try to decrease the deficit. The right wingers who allege this are against such spending programs, are against expansion of government and would never have insitituted the New Deal programs in the first place.
Krugman is saying that FDR had the right idea and the right start but did not go far enough especially in 1937. Proof can be found that the biggest government spending program in American history started just a few years later effectively ending the Depression.
