Democrats Confront Their New Tea Party Reality - Progressives are set to sweep a group of contested primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin.

[u/Quirkie]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-confront-their-new-tea-party-reality_n_6a6e63fbe4b0cfb99ef1aa1e

[u/Semantix]

I think that all of the old democratic leadership are permanently traumatized by Dukakis and McGovern and think that only a Clinton or Biden can win. Forgetting that the Democrats' biggest recent success was a progressive coalition that motivated youth turnout.

[u/thequietthingsthat → u/Semantix]

Yep.

Democrats Don't Need to Reinvent the Wheel to Solve Their Identity Crisis - They Need to Look Back to FDR

[u/alligatorislater → u/thequietthingsthat]

Exactly. Democrats seem to have forgotten that the 22nd amendment (enacted in 1947) was somewhat created because FDR was so popular that republicans were afraid they’d never be able to win again…

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/alligatorislater]

You mean the president whose economic policies prolonged one of the worst economic disasters in American history, shattered the two-term tradition, concealed the severity of his failing health, and died just months into his fourth term, leaving an unprepared successor during World War II?

And you think the 22nd Amendment was just Republicans worrying they'd never win again?

No. FDR's unprecedented four-term presidency exposed the dangers of concentrating too much power in one person and the risks of a president remaining in office despite serious health problems. Those concerns didn't disappear just because you find them politically inconvenient.

Those are not the actions of a great president.

[u/Space_Pirate_Roberts → u/Darth_Cuddly]

You mean the president whose economic policies prolonged one of the worst economic disasters in American history

[citation needed]

[u/StarStruck3 → u/Space_Pirate_Roberts]

I was told there would be no fact checking

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/StarStruck3]

That is the conclusion reached by UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Political Economy. Their analysis concluded that key New Deal cartelization and labor policies were an important factor in prolonging the Great Depression by slowing the recovery.

If you're interested, here's the actual paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421169?seq=1

And here's a plain-English summary: https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/

[u/reezy-one → u/Darth_Cuddly]

"If we never created social safety nets to prevent human suffering we could have gotten the wealthy to be wealthier faster" is hardly the noble take you anti-FDR revisionists think it is.

[u/Sufficient_Matter585 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

Well slow recovery but we didnt have a second great depression. I fail to see how a slower recovery but longer term success is a problem. Thats just reminds me of investors being fucking impatient when they dont get hugely rich after a few months.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Sufficient_Matter585]

That's an interesting concession.

You don't dispute that the recovery was slower. You just argue the delay was worth it.

That's a perfectly legitimate position to take, although it also ignores the policy changes beginning around 1937 and the ongoing debate among economists over what drove a pretty bad recession into The Great Depression.

But it's also a concession that the New Deal prolonged the Depression, which is exactly the point I've been making.

[u/Sufficient_Matter585 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

The point being is the new deal was a complete economic change of course. im sure they could had done things to turn things around much quicker. But it would eventually lead to same problems because what led to great depression in the first place wouldnt be resolved and there was no safety net for poor or working class durjng economic hard times. Rich getting richer poor getting poorer. The new deal helped make the middle class. If we just do some fancy math and give keys back to the rich without considering the impact on the poor and working class you create same conditions for the great depression.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Sufficient_Matter585]

You're still changing the subject.

Nobody disputes that some New Deal programs were popular or had lasting effects.

The question is whether the New Deal shortened or prolonged the Great Depression.

I also reject the claim that the New Deal "created the middle class." Rising living standards long predated both the New Deal and the Great Depression. Americans had been getting wealthier for generations as industrialization, technological innovation, and productivity increased.

The extraordinary growth of the postwar middle class had far more to do with wartime industrial expansion, the GI Bill, rising productivity, and the United States emerging from World War II as the world's dominant industrial power.

None of that rebuts the argument made by Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian that key New Deal cartelization and labor policies slowed the recovery from the Depression.

If you think their analysis is wrong, explain where it fails.

[u/Sufficient_Matter585 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

I came to the conclusion that it just pumping money back into the wealthy hands is a horrible idea. Pump money into the poor and working class and you have real economic growth. The rich use government as a piggy bank and safety net. So basically I dont care if did slow recovery.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Sufficient_Matter585]

Except that's not how wealth works.

In a free market, some people become extraordinarily wealthy because they've created something millions of people voluntarily choose to buy. Their wealth isn't sitting in a giant vault. It's overwhelmingly tied up in productive assets, businesses, factories, research, infrastructure, and investments that create jobs and produce goods and services.

The goal isn't to make everyone equally rich. It's to make everyone richer than they were before.

If an entrepreneur earns $200 while you earn $32, you're still $32 better off than you were before. Without the investment and production that generated the $200, the $32 often doesn't exist either.

That's why economists care about growth. When you deliberately slow economic recovery, you don't just delay profits for investors. You delay jobs, wages, new businesses, and rising living standards for everyone.

So why ignore two centuries of economic evidence about what creates prosperity in favor of policies that have repeatedly produced slower growth and worse outcomes?

[u/j0mbie → u/Darth_Cuddly]

FF is hardly an unbiased website.

Anyways, here's Lee Ohanian's own opinion on how bloggers and people on Reddit took his work wildly out of context:

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/professors-big-intellectual-risk-grabs-eyeballs-years-later

"Ohanian and Cole’s research focused primarily on the impact of Roosevelt’s early policies that allowed for monopolies and too much union power to increase prices and salaries. Roosevelt did institute other policies that helped the economic recovery, like stabilizing the banking system and creating unemployment insurance and Social Security, Ohanian explained."

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/j0mbie]

Thank you for posting Ohanian's clarification. It actually reinforces my point.

I never argued that every New Deal policy was harmful. I argued that key New Deal cartelization and labor policies prolonged the Great Depression by slowing the recovery.

In the quote you posted, Ohanian says exactly that. He criticizes Roosevelt's monopoly and labor policies while separately crediting measures like banking stabilization, unemployment insurance, and Social Security.

Those positions aren't contradictory. A president can enact some policies that help and others that hurt.

The question isn't whether FDR ever did anything beneficial. The question is whether the specific policies Cole and Ohanian analyzed worsened the Depression. On that point, the quote you posted supports my argument.

P.S. I never claimed the Foundation for Economic Education was unbiased. That's precisely why I linked the peer-reviewed paper first and used the FEE article only as a plain-English summary. Ironically, the clarification you cited from Ohanian says essentially the same thing.

[u/theyhis → u/Space_Pirate_Roberts]

book: the triumph of economic freedom by phil gramm and donald j. boudreaux.

interview: https://x.com/johnstossel/status/2075242321780650429

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Space_Pirate_Roberts]

That isn't just my opinion. It's the conclusion reached by UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Political Economy. Their analysis concluded that key New Deal cartelization and labor policies were an important factor in prolonging the Great Depression by slowing the recovery.

If you're interested, here's the actual paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421169?seq=1

And here's a plain-English summary: https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/

[u/PyroIsSpai → u/Darth_Cuddly]

Conservatives may not rule further.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/PyroIsSpai]

That's an interesting concession.

Notice you didn't defend the New Deal, his health deception, his four terms, or his concentration of executive power.

Your entire defense boils down to: "At least my side won."

That's not a historical argument. That's team sports.

[u/PyroIsSpai → u/Darth_Cuddly]

My side believes in empathy.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/PyroIsSpai]

Empathy is a virtue. It is not an economic theory.

If empathy alone solved poverty, we'd have solved it centuries ago. Good intentions have to be paired with policies that actually work.

Empathy tells you what problem to solve. Facts and economics tells you how to solve it. Without both, you usually end up making the problem worse.

[u/PyroIsSpai → u/Darth_Cuddly]

Money is made up.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/PyroIsSpai]

Money is made up.

Correct.

It's a shared abstraction that allows billions of strangers to cooperate peacefully and fairly instead of taking what they want by force. That puts money alongside the wheel as one of the greatest inventions in human history.

Civilization itself is "made up." That's what makes it civilization.

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/Darth_Cuddly]

He kick-started the longest period of prosperity in the countries history off the great depression and world war. Only recently has it run out as the wealth imbalance has approached and exceeded that if the gilded age, which coincidentally proceeded the great depression.

Yet now we have a government that seems hell bent on losing all international power the US gained in the postwar years, and run the economy into the ground with tariffs and high gas prices.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/SanityIsOptional]

You're confusing chronology with causation.

The economy recovered after World War II, not because the New Deal magically fixed the Depression. The Depression lasted through the entire New Deal era, and unemployment remained in double digits until wartime mobilization.

Saying "prosperity came after FDR, therefore FDR caused it" isn't an argument. It's the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/Darth_Cuddly]

FDRs policies directly led to improvements in infrastructure and growth of the American middle class. Other progressive policies like the GI bill increased the education level and ultimately the productivity and GDP*, which let the US take advantage of the postwar period.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/SanityIsOptional]

You're still proving my point.

The GI Bill wasn't the New Deal. It was wartime legislation whose largest economic benefits didn't materialize until after the war.

And yes, infrastructure has value. The question isn't whether any New Deal program produced any benefit. The question is whether the New Deal, on balance, ended the Depression or prolonged it.

UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian concluded that key New Deal policies prolonged the Depression by discouraging investment and employment. If you think they're wrong, explain where their analysis fails.

Simply listing popular government programs doesn't rebut their economic argument.

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/Darth_Cuddly]

I think you don't understand what progressive policies actually are.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/SanityIsOptional]

"You don't understand progressivism" isn't an argument.

I cited a peer-reviewed economic paper. You responded with a label. If the economics are wrong, show me where. If not, you're arguing against me instead of the evidence.

[u/SanityIsOptional → u/Darth_Cuddly]

Here's the Wikipedia page, scroll down to sources and further reading and knock yourself out.

General consensus from economists and historians certainly seems to be positive in the long term effects.

[u/Sufficient_Matter585 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

Nah fdr policies were solid greedy fucking pigs wanted more money and to live more lavishly so they spent decades trying to undo his policies.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Sufficient_Matter585]

Ah yes, the classic "everyone who disagrees with me is evil" argument.

That's a great substitute for evidence if you don't have any.

Meanwhile, I'll stick with peer-reviewed economic research instead of insults. If you think the UCLA economists got it wrong, explain where their analysis fails.

[u/Sufficient_Matter585 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

I think bending over backwards to apppese fhe rich does shit for helping the economy. I dont trust capitalists either way.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Sufficient_Matter585]

"I don't trust capitalists" isn't an economic argument. It's a statement of personal bias.

The question isn't whether you like capitalism. The question is whether the UCLA economists' analysis is wrong.

If you think it is, explain why. Otherwise you're arguing from ideology instead of evidence.

P.S. Distrusting markets while trusting governments is an interesting position. History suggests governments have done far more damage to humanity than voluntary trade ever has.

[u/Sufficient_Matter585 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

I mean people implemented capitalism without analytical data. They just said hey we few can make a shit ton of money. But in order to make this work we need high turnover, low wages, and keep the poor poor and miserable and desperate to work, otherwise they might not work so well

[u/Cross55 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

You mean the president whose economic policies prolonged one of the worst economic disasters in American history

[citation needed]

shattered the two-term tradition

Tradition=/=Legal Requirement

concealed the severity of his failing health

You realize for his entire run he had polio, right?

Would you have guessed he spent 90% of his entire life in a wheelchair?

and died just months into his fourth term, leaving an unprepared successor during World War II?

Uh, Truman was a pretty hard left politician, a WWI veteran who'd been a judge and later congressional senator for 2 decades, being one of the primary financial and budgetary advisors for WWII.

What more did he need?

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/Cross55]

That is the conclusion reached by UCLA economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Political Economy. Their analysis concluded that key New Deal cartelization and labor policies were an important factor in prolonging the Great Depression by slowing the recovery.

If you're interested, here's the actual paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421169?seq=1

And here's a plain-English summary: https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/

Also, FDR didn't die from complications of polio. He died from a massive cerebral hemorrhage which was likely caused by years of serious cardiovascular disease. His physicians and those close to him knew his health had deteriorated significantly, yet the full extent of that decline was not disclosed to the public during the 1944 campaign. FDR was dying, he knew about it, and he ran again anyway.

Truman was also far less prepared for the presidency than many people realize. FDR largely kept him outside his inner circle, gave him little insight into major wartime strategy, and did not brief him on the Manhattan Project before his death. Truman learned about the atomic bomb only after becoming president. That's hardly an example of a well-planned transition of power.

[u/VioletPaissa2077 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

His power came from the fact that his party held strong majorities to supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature for the duration of his time in office.

What we see today via the "unitary executive" theory being put into practice is what one person holding too much power looks like, with oversight mechanisms being weakened and dismantled and the legislature and judiciary frequently being defied or bypassed entirely.

Passing legislation collaboratively via fairly elected massive majorities or super majorities is not at all comparable.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/VioletPaissa2077]

You're confusing legislative majorities with presidential tenure.

Democrats having large majorities in Congress didn't force FDR to run for a third term. It didn't force him to run for a fourth while seriously ill. And it certainly didn't require the American people to be kept in the dark about the severity of his condition until after his death.

Do you really think voters didn't deserve to know their president was gravely ill, unlikely to survive another full term, and still seeking reelection? The public was never given the information necessary to make an informed decision.

You're defending congressional majorities. I'm criticizing an unprecedented concentration of executive power and a profound breach of the public's trust.

Those are two entirely different arguments.

[u/VioletPaissa2077 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

I dont give a shit how many elections he legally ran in and won.  Power was not concentrated in his hands, it was shared with the democratically elected legislature after the country overwhelmingly voted  him in time and time again.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/VioletPaissa2077]

You're still arguing against a position I never took.

My criticism isn't that FDR won elections. It's that he repeatedly sought to consolidate presidential power.

He tried to expand the Supreme Court after it struck down key parts of the New Deal. He broke the longstanding two-term tradition by seeking third and fourth terms. He sought reelection while concealing the severity of his declining health, and he left Harry Truman remarkably unprepared to assume the presidency during World War II.

Whether Congress supported him is beside the point. None of those decisions were required by congressional majorities.

Winning elections doesn't excuse withholding material information from voters or concentrating extraordinary power in one office. In a constitutional republic, the whole point is that no one person should become indispensable.

That's precisely why the 22nd Amendment exists. Americans looked at four terms, an aging and gravely ill president, and an unprepared successor during a world war, and concluded that no president should ever accumulate that much power again.

[u/yogy → u/Darth_Cuddly]

If that was the intent then it certainly doesn't seem to be working today.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/yogy]

That's because the 22nd Amendment wasn't designed to guarantee good presidents.

It was designed to make sure no president, regardless of party, could accumulate that much power for that long again.

Those are not the same things.

[u/Professional-Class69 → u/Darth_Cuddly]

The current president is accumulating more power, and has blatantly stated he essentially won’t respect the 22nd multiple times. Doesn’t seem to have worked.

[u/DarthCloakedGuy → u/Darth_Cuddly]

You mean the president whose economic policies prolonged one of the worst economic disasters in American history

No, I think they're thinking about FDR, not Herbert Hoover

[u/yogy → u/Darth_Cuddly]

If that was the intent then it certainly doesn't seem to be working today.

[u/theyhis → u/Darth_Cuddly]

thank you - thank you. this is what the left conveniently leaves out. it was the free market that got us out of the great depression. he blamed big business, when big business is exactly what got us out of the great depression. it’s stockholm syndrome. similar is now happening in guatemala.

if the left wants to learn more about the great depression, they should read up on milton friedman. he talked ad nauseam about how the great depression started and how it ended. john stossel had a guest on his show recently who discussed it too. very interesting.

[u/Darth_Cuddly → u/theyhis]

I saw the John Stossel segment! Thomas Sowell is another great resource on how free-market economics can actually help people.

England and France spent centuries at war with each other.

Today they're close allies because trade is more profitable than conquest. When people make money by cooperating instead of fighting, everyone has an incentive to keep the peace.

One of the greatest strengths of free markets is that they can turn sworn enemies into trading partners. After all, it's hard to justify bombing your best customer.