We Haven’t Stopped Paying for the New Deal

‘Far from ‘right-sizing’ the government, FDR expanded it into areas it was never supposed to tread,’ writes Robert E. Wright.

Letter to The WSJ.

"Younger generations have learned—despite what their history textbooks have repeated ad nauseam—that government policies caused and exacerbated the Great Depression. The New Deal wasn’t only unnecessary to achieve what David M. Kennedy calls “the conditions of modern society” (Letters, Dec. 10). It hurt many Americans then and continues to do so today.

Far from “right-sizing” the government, FDR expanded it into areas it was never supposed to tread, including retirement annuities, healthcare and higher education, all of which unsurprisingly constitute the most dysfunctional parts of the modern economy. In the process, he also weakened the Bill of Rights, impoverished blacks and stymied women’s return to the workplace.

 

Devaluation of the dollar alone induced the economy to rebound strongly off the March 1933 bottom. All the rest, including the National Recovery Administration, gold confiscation, the Tennessee Valley Authority and endless other top-down tinkerings slowed or reversed the initially robust expansion.

Many other New Deal programs stymied subsequent market development. Most tragically, perhaps, rural electrification held back green-energy technologies, including windmills and batteries, for decades. In many areas, like southern Alabama, the program subsidized the electrification of the summer homes of the wealthy more than it aided farmers. I could go on.

Robert E. Wright

Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Mr. Wright is author, most recently, of “FDR’s Long New Deal.”"