thrash;198719 wrote:
I couldn't say what i'd have done.
My initial answer is "nothing", because my beleif is that the less the government does, the better off everyone is.
I don't claim to have an answer for everything. I'm not some brilliant politician or economist and as such I am not claiming to solve all your problems. What I do say is that a lot of government reaction has bad, unintended side effects, and is questionable at actually solving the problem(s) it was aimed at.
If there's anything to take away from a review of government action and the unintended consequences that followed, I'd say that a government that does as little as possible thereby does the minimal amount of damage.
Was "leaving" the depression as soon as possible even the right "goal"? Hasn't our economy been see-sawing ever since then? We now find ourselves with a fiat currency and an unaccountable federal reserve system?
Don't get me wrong -- I think people like FDR probably thought they were doing the best thing they could do at the time. That doesn't mean it turned out like roses and puppies after 70 years of an ugly world. We now find ourselves with 70 years of constant shifting towards a nanny state and hopefully a few of us are willing to reform or repeal that nannyism because we see what it has done in some other economies around the world, and what it is doing in our own society.
The economic point of view in the that time is that the economy will shift itself back into place without any interference from the government. They were basically going off the old theories that were developed in England in the 1800's. They new theories of economics were brought forth such as keynesian economics which they were reluctant to use. The main point was to stimulate the economy by investing into it. The ideas came from Britiain not the United States. After the ecnomoy kept falling further and further and with unemployment rates up to 25% somebody had to try and do something. The banks and stock market collapsed also....so without government intervention it would have taken double the time to get out of it. I am not a rocket scientist or claim to be smart, but common sense tells me the government had to do something to get out of this mess at that time. The government may be corrupt but they are going to do something during a crisis, just like a majority of the governments in the world would do... I think your a smart guy, but you think way to negatively in my eyes like everybody is out to get you. But that is the wonder of free speech....we can just agree to disagree.
