Reply #7: He did all those things in an effort to help working people

[1932]

...except for the last claim about worsening the depression -- that's just a total misrepresentation of the facts.

From '32 to '37, FDR's policies grew the economy and improved wages for working people every year. However, FDR wasn't yet an avowed Keynesian. In '37, his Secretary of the Treasury Robert (?) Morgenthau (a Wall Streeter) talked him into running a balanced budget. Things got worse (it was called The Mini-Depression of '37). That convinced FDR to fully embrace Keynesian economics. In '38, the Republicans gained seats in Congress because of the Morgenthau plan, so it became harder for FDR to get his policies through. But what he did do (which was Keynesian) again improved the economy. FDR won four elections (three of them before there was a war). Obviously people thought he was making things better (and he was).

Regarding those other claims: during the depression, half of the US economy (or was it half of all employment? -- I can't remember) was related to agriculture. Because of bad agriculture policy, prices farmers got were depressed during the Depression (but retail prices weren't). FDR's strategy was to get farmers and farm workers more income (which apparently came out of the profit that retailers got). That's the essence of Keynes: get the money down to the first person in the chain (usually a working class person), rather than the last (usually a large corporation). To reduce the oversupply of farm products, paying people not to produce was one of the strategies. It worked. There's no doubt about that. It got farmers and workers more money and didn't cause retail price inflation.

Internment camps -- that was fucked up. I'm not going to try to defend that, or the show trial of the fifth columnists (is that what they were called?).

The Supreme Court: I can defend that enthusiastically. That court was stacked with nine pro-corporate anti-democratic stooges with life tenure who were an anchor to a past, and that wasn't working for America. You got to be proud of FDR for trying to do right by the people by getting decent patriots who cared about the working men and women on that court.

There is probably no other president who both cared about how Americans ACTUALLY LIVED THEIR LIVES and then DID WHAT WAS NECESSARY TO MAKE THEIR LIVES BETTER no matter how much resistance he got from the powerful.

For more information about FDR's economic programs, I recommend the 100-150 pages that cover the FDR years in Richard Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith.