Friday, December 19, 2008

 

Great (and Depressing) TV Show About the New Deal

Bryan Caplan and David Henderson have been raving about this half-hour Canadian show on the New Deal, and boy they were right. Like David, I intended to just watch a few minutes, and finally around 20 minutes into it I decided to stop agonizing, and just resolve to watch the whole thing.

What's really amazing is that even the pro-FDR guys only rebut the anti-FDR guys by saying things like "Roosevelt wasn't trying to fix unemployment, he was trying to revamp American capitalism, so he succeeded in that respect" and of course "He made Americans feel good." (Not exact quotes but close.)

I think I'm going to write a book about this.

# posted by Bob Murphy @ 1:08 AM


Comments:
That show was excellent, regardless of one's political and economic opinions. Is that sort of quality of television common in Canada?
# posted by Blogger Grant : December 19, 2008 at 2:55 AM
 
A friend of mine I think has coined the best summary of FDR's career.

"FDR gave the American people "Hope" in the Great Depression, when they really wanted jobs.

And he gave them "leadership" in World War Two, when they really wanted peace."
# posted by Blogger earth that was : December 19, 2008 at 8:21 AM
 
There seemed to be a general agreement, however, that some of the entitlements that came out of the new deal were good (Social security) and that it was bad that they couldn't expand the money supply (because of the hard currency).

Which seems to suggest that they regarded the Feds current actions right now as good. Of course, ABCT would suggest otherwise. Who should we believe?
# posted by Blogger zdk : December 19, 2008 at 1:51 PM
 
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