It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => History => Topic started by: jpatrickham on October 03, 2011, 11:09:09 AM
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Daily Policy Digest
Daily Policy Digest Archive
Economic Issues
October 3, 2011
"Politicians and pundits portray Herbert Hoover as a defender of laissez faire governance whose dogmatic commitment to small government led him to stand by and do nothing while the economy collapsed in the wake of the stock market crash in 1929. This is inaccurate, says Steven Horwitz, the Charles A. Dana professor of economics at St. Lawrence University and an affiliated senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
In fact, Hoover had long been a critic of laissez faire.
As president, he doubled federal spending in real terms in four years.
He also used government to prop up wages, restricted immigration, signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, raised taxes and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation -- all interventionist measures and not laissez faire.
Unlike many Democrats today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's advisers knew that Hoover had started the New Deal. One of them wrote, "When we all burst into Washington ... we found every essential idea [of the New Deal] enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover administration itself."
Hoover's big-spending, interventionist policies prolonged the Great Depression, and similar policies today could do similar damage. Dismantling the mythical presentation of Hoover as a "do-nothing" president is crucial if we wish to have a proper understanding of what did and did not work in the Great Depression so that we do not repeat Hoover's mistakes today.
Source: Steven Horwitz, "Herbert Hoover: Father of the New Deal," Cato Institute, September 29, 2011."
For text:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13719 (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13719)
For more on Economic Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=17 (http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=17)
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I've seen other such discussions before. Some link Hoover to G W Bush, linking Keynesian's and Neo-Keynesian's and repeating the same mistakes, none more so than the horrendous accelaeration of stupid under FDR & Obama. Stupid Neo-Keynesian's and progressives of any era always spell doom for America. It is a universal constant like death and taxes.
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I've seen other such discussions before. Some link Hoover to G W Bush, linking Keynesian's and Neo-Keynesian's and repeating the same mistakes, none more so than the horrendous accelaeration of stupid under FDR & Obama. Stupid Neo-Keynesian's and progressives of any era always spell doom for America. It is a universal constant like death and taxes.
It is so simple even I understand it. Hoover gave us Roosevelt, Nixon-Ford gave us Carter, Bush gave us Obama. NO more! ::gaah:: Palin-Ryan! ::newyear:: ::newyear:: ::newyear::
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I've seen other such discussions before. Some link Hoover to G W Bush, linking Keynesian's and Neo-Keynesian's and repeating the same mistakes, none more so than the horrendous accelaeration of stupid under FDR & Obama. Stupid Neo-Keynesian's and progressives of any era always spell doom for America. It is a universal constant like death and taxes.
It is so simple even I understand it. Hoover gave us Roosevelt, Nixon-Ford gave us Carter, Bush gave us Obama. NO more! ::gaah:: Palin-Ryan! ::newyear:: ::newyear:: ::newyear::
I think I prefer Cain/Rubio
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Hoover gave us Roosevelt, Nixon-Ford gave us Carter, Bush gave us Obama. NO more! ::gaah:: Palin-Ryan! ::newyear:: ::newyear:: ::newyear::
But Carter gave us Reagan. ::USA:: We may see something this election, IF we can find the right candidate. ::thinking::