PS: Uncle Sunny ... You made the statement that FDR got us back on track with the New Deal. Facts will show that there were more unemployed at the start of FDR's third term than there were at the start of his first term. All the socialistic welfare state programs did nothing to end the depression. In fact, they prolonged the depression. What turned the economy around was WWII.
Um, in 1933, When Roosevelt took over from Hoover,unemployment was 25.2 percent. In 1940, the election year of his third term, Unemployment was 13.9. Now, I know that there are factors going on that skew numbers...for example, the massive immigration of European settlers between 1850 and 1920 were now no longer immigrants or undocumented workers, they were Americans with kids and rights and the government finally counted them, so there could have technically been higher numbers of unemployed people due to Documented Citizen population increase. WWII started years before the US entered it, and many people in a time of war do the logical thing--they run like hell. America had another surge of immigrants all demanding status, causing unemployment numbers to raise.
I quoted you what I read from the Department of Commerce's stats, but I wouldn't argue that certain political writers could change the numbers based on immigration. It's kinda what I'm doing. See, I can blame Hoover, who after all was secretary of Commerce to the most vile and hated president in my mind--Calvin Coolidge. I could base my whole argument on defending Roosevelt, and that it was the Conservative Coalition or the business policies of the World Bank flunkies who came before him, but I'm not going to.
It is impossible to look at the rising and falling of a fluid system and blame the guy at the helm when you hit a wave. America was a different place before the big war and the boomers that followed. America wasn't fixed by WWII, it was deified and thrust into insane amounts of power and control. Sure, there were capitalist far before it, but WWII wasn't a get back on track thing--it was what made us King of the World.
It is as difficult for Baby Boomers to picture the world before the War as it is for my generation to picture the world without Television. Post WWII created a structure in this country that is only now dwindling down. America used to be a whole land of Immigrants, but parties like the "Know Nothings" which spouted the "Git off my Land" ideology and the rising xenophobia of Eugenics prevalent at that time illustrate the change in our culture.
Because of the ideas of what America was when my father was a boy, these "boys" are running a country based on that same solution. We are a war based economy. However, we are not a war based populace like "Golden Generation"-these people dug out of their cellars for scrap to help the war. We now watch biased news reports and throw yellow ribbons on our cars to show we care.
Do I think FDR's Socialist gamble helped American workers? Yes. Do I think that the War trumped anything that anybody did in policy making? Fuck yeah. The point I wanted to make is that when something works in America, it seems impossible to change it, even if it worked once but clearly doesn't work anymore. That was the point I wanted to make about Welfare, and it is how I feel about my Nation's policy on war.
