It's funny because that 2004 UCLA study is widely regarded by many to be a conservative attempt at revisionism. The New Deal as a whole had a positive effect on the economy. The study says that market forces would have been able to work at a pace 60% faster than they would have without NIRA in effect for those two years. That's all well and good, but how fast exactly do market forces move? The answer is, historically, at a
glacial pace. That is why the New Deal is still credited with speeding the recovery of the great depression. There is no evidence to suggest that market forces alone could drop unemployment from over almost 24% to 14.6%
that's 4 million people who gained employment in that time, the New Deal did, in fact, preside over the fastest recovery in history and to credit market forces alone is at best misguided and at worst sabotaging the future.
In response to that graph, if you look at debt as a percentage of GDP, our post WW2 debt was ~120% of the U.S. economy. Funny how inflation works (overstating our debt). Also, it seems war is expensive.
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