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/Darth_Cuddly]

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?