Railroad magnates had laid all this track, acquired all these railroad cars, hired all these porters, etc.. They wanted to make more money out of that stuff than they were already making. So, they wanted a national park system. That way, ordinary people might be able to afford a vacation consisting of a train ticket to a national park that was distant from their city tenement, where they could have free admission and camp out relatively inexpensively. A destination vacation for relatively poor people.
The taxpayer would acquire and maintain the parks, thereby enabling the railroad magnates to sell more railroad tickets. And poorer people in cities (though not the poorest) would be able to have a family vacation in fresh air, amid nature. Railroad companies would publicize the national parks and also invest in them so they could sell more railroad tickets. Win win win. So, national parks were indeed a form of corporate welfare, but one that did benefit "the working stiff," or at least the working stiffs who could afford railroad tickets for the family. (Circus?)
I'm guessing that the lumber/paper industries loved national parks, too. So, whom did the Conservation Corps benefit most, aside from the people who collected paychecks for the actual conservation work? Hard to say.
A lot of things FDR did via his New Deals benefited business, aka the economy, as much or more than they benefited the rest of America. The banks had gone bust. People took what was left of their money out of banks and stuck it under the mattress. How to get people who had been so badly burned to have the confidence to bring their money back to the banks? Create the FDIC.
Wall Street had taken the rest of their money. How to get people who had been so badly burned to buy stocks again? create the SEC to regulate sales of stock and other securities, change the bankruptcy laws to investigate companies that had gone belly up to make sure the officers and directors had not pocketed the money. Pass Glass Steagall to help ensure that the banks remained solvent, etc.
The national highway system that FDR wanted, but did not get around to, would provide construction jobs at the start, but would eventually sell cars and gasoline, as well as enabling the working stiff and his family to see the USA in their Chevrolet. (And probably created the motel industry, I'm guessing.)
So, a lot of FDR's New Deals were also corporate welfare, but benefited many, many ordinary people enough as well as benefiting the very rich and powerful.
What FDR and Joe Kennedy seemed to get was that, be it the banks or the railroads or the stock market, the consumer is a very important part of economic recovery. And the stuff they and the other New Dealers did was genius and, as you pointed out, incredibly rapid. However, also, recovery was easier then because the US had, compared to today, a relatively self-contained economy.
In a global economy, the American worker/consumer is not the be all and end all, either on the producing goods for sale end or the buying goods end. (Truman and Eisenhower had it even easier, because World War II had substantially knocked out two of our largest pre-war competitors on the production end, Germany and Japan and Eisenhower enjoyed the income from FDR's war tax without having to spend to fight any major war. So, "Ike" looked like a genius.)
= new reply since forum marked as read
?w=241&h=300
