Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
Unemployment rates by year during the first Roosevelt administration:
1933: 20.6
1934: 16.0
1935: 14.2
1936: 9.9
1937: 9.1
Sorry--I guess you had some kind of a point, but I couldn't hear you over all the facts.
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I looked up these numbers, and I need to ask you - care to provide your source? Because I found different numbers:
It needs to be recalled that at no time during the 1930s did the percentage of Americans unemployed drop below double digits. From 1933-1940 it averaged a whopping 18 percent. FDR’s best year was 1937, when the rate dropped temporarily to 14.3 percent, but by the end of the year the economy was nearly as bad as it had been when he entered office. By the time of American entry into World War II, unemployment was still at 18 percent – the same rate that obtained during Roosevelt's first year as President!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/woods2.html
Numbers lifted from this book:
John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth
50th anniversary edition, with a new introduction by Ralph Raico
San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1998,
Further reading:
Jim Powell, FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression
http://www.amazon.com/FDRs-Folly-Roo.../dp/0761501657
"Admirers of FDR credit his New Deal with restoring the American economy after the disastrous contraction of 1929-33. Truth to tell - as Powell demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt - the New Deal hampered recovery from the contraction, prolonged and added to unemployment, and set the stage for ever more intrusive and costly government. Powell's analysis is thoroughly documented, relying on an impressive variety of popular and academic literature both contemporary and historical."
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Hoover Institution
"Jim Powell draws together voluminous economic research on the effects of all of Roosevelt's major policies. Along the way, Powell gives fascinating thumbnail sketches of the major players. The result is a devastating indictment, compellingly told. Those who think that government intervention helped get the U.S. economy out of the depression should read this book."
David R. Henderson, editor of The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics and author of The Joy of Freedom