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New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America | 
| Author: Burton W. Folsom Jr.
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Category: Book
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Rating:  115 reviews
Sales Rank: 2260
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 1416592377
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9781416592372
ASIN: 1416592377
Publication Date: November 17, 2009
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Product Description
A sharply critical new look at Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency reveals government policies that hindered economic recovery from the Great Depression -- and are still hurting America today. In this shocking and groundbreaking new book, economic historian Burton W. Folsom exposes the idyllic legend of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a myth of epic proportions. With questionable moral character and a vendetta against the business elite, Roosevelt created New Deal programs marked by inconsistent planning, wasteful spending, and opportunity for political gain -- ultimately elevating public opinion of his administration but falling flat in achieving the economic revitalization that America so desperately needed from the Great Depression. Folsom takes a critical, revisionist look at Roosevelt's presidency, his economic policies, and his personal life. Elected in 1932 on a buoyant tide of promises to balance the increasingly uncontrollable national budget and reduce the catastrophic unemployment rate, the charismatic thirty-second president not only neglected to pursue those goals, he made dramatic changes to federal programming that directly contradicted his campaign promises. Price fixing, court packing, regressive taxes, and patronism were all hidden inside the alphabet soup of his popular New Deal, putting a financial strain on the already suffering lower classes and discouraging the upper classes from taking business risks that potentially could have jostled national cash flow from dormancy. Many government programs that are widely used today have their seeds in the New Deal. Farm subsidies, minimum wage, and welfare, among others, all stifle economic growth -- encouraging decreased productivity and exacerbating unemployment. Roosevelt's imperious approach to the presidency changed American politics forever, and as he manipulated public opinion, American citizens became unwitting accomplices to the stilted economic growth of the 1930s. More than sixty years after FDR died in office, we still struggle with the damaging repercussions of his legacy.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 115
 Definitely a Raw Deal December 7, 2008
Doug (Washington D.C. area)
199 out of 225 found this review helpful
Burton Folsom's New Deal or Raw Deal? is a timely, informative and captivating read on the destructive economic policies on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration. This book is a valuable addition to the growing number of books on how government intervention, not free markets, plunged the United States deep into the Great Depression.
Folsom corrects many common misconceptions about the New Deal and the Great Depression in this book. The first misconception is that President Hoover was a principled advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, Folsom argues, Hoover was a big government Republican. Consider the Smoot-Hawley Act, which imposed unprecedented tariffs on thousands of imported items. Not only did this drastically increase the prices of U.S. imports (hurting U.S. consumers), but it also encouraged European nations to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports (hurting U.S. producers.) Furthermore, Hoover responded to the early onset of the Great Depression with disastrous economic regulations. He endorsed the Federal Farm Board, which issued over $500 million in cotton and wheat subsidies only to have the massive surpluses dumped on an oversaturated world market. Hoover also supposed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which spent over $1.5 billion on bailouts to failing banks and industries.
Another major point of Folsom's book is that many of FDR's programs were struck down as unconstitutional. These include the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). The NIRA imposed economy-wide price controls and production regulations on domestic manufacturing. The AAA was similar in spirit, except it focused on price and production controls on agriculture. The extent of the controls evidently became so detailed where, for example, the purchasers of a live chicken were required by law to blindly reach into the coop to randomly choose a chicken. Customers were not free to choose whichever chicken they fancied. Recognizing the absurdity of this, one of the Supreme Court justices quipped "what if the chickens are all on the other side?" before the Supreme Court unanimously ruled the NIRA unconstitutional.
Folsom also emphasizes the crushing tax burdens imposed by the New Deal. Under FDR, the highest income tax rate was 79%, meaning that four out of five earned dollars was confiscated by the government! According to Folsom, FDR also seriously entertained the idea of imposing a 99.5% income tax rate on all who earned over $100,000 in income. Flippantly justifying this, FDR joked that nobody in his administration would ever make that kind of money. Under FDR, the national debt grew more in the 1930s than it grew in the previous 150 years of the existence of the United States. Putting it in other words, Folsom indicates that if $100/minute was deposited into an account the day Columbus discovered North America up until FDR took office, there would not be enough money in this account to fully defray the costs of the New Deal.
The last major point that I will reiterate is the extensive level of corruption of the FDR administration. According to Folsom's research, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) offered large government handouts to whichever lobbyists ingratiated themselves most with the administration. FDR used the WPA to make or break the careers of public officials, depending on whether they supported him. This corruption rose to such an overt and perverse level that officials at the WPA used to cheerfully greet callers with "Democratic headquarters!" The Hatch Act, which forbids government employees from using their office for political activity, was passed in response to these activities.
If you like FDR, reading this book will shock you. If you already despise FDR, reading this book will reveal how truly appalling his administration was and how in many respects, FDR was like a gangster. In addition to the above, you will learn about how FDR used the IRS to intimidate political opponents, such as the esteemed banker Andrew Mellon as well as FDR's unscrupulous court-packing scheme. You will learn about the sheer arbitrary nature of FDR's economic controls. This cannot be better exemplified than how, when advised to increase the unit price of gold from 19 cents to 22 cents, FDR proposed 21 cents since it was his "lucky number".
Anyone interested in politics and economic history should read this book, before history repeats itself.
Should be Mandatory Reading for Every Citizen! January 24, 2009
Liberty4all (New York, NY USA)
105 out of 121 found this review helpful
I'll confess to not being a fan of big government so I was prepared to be receptive to a harsh assessment of the New Deal. However, I was not prepared for the scathing indictment armed with facts, logic, primary source quotes and data that constitute this powerful book.
The book is hard to put down even as you recoil in horror at the lunatic economic policies of the era and the blatant turn to fascism. If you tried to design a program to extend the Great Depression indefinitely, you could have done little better than FDR did. The economic incompetence and unintended consequences which are detailed in all their frightening glory is mind boggling, but it is only part of the story.
The book also demonstrates the endemic political patronage and vote buying that resulted from the concentration of money and power in the hands of the federal government. State and local politicians who supported Roosevelt were rewarded with a cascade of federal dollars, those who opposed him were frozen out and inevitably lost subsequent elections.
Citizens who opposed FDR were set upon by the IRS or the NRA. The use of government power to persecute and intimidate dissension is chilling. There are several quotes or diary entries from even Roosevelt's supporters and cabinet members that point out both the insanity of the policies and the dangers of FDR's abuse of power.
With our government setting out on what's been called the "New New Deal", this book should be required reading for every citizen so they can understand both the failure of the New Deal as an economic cure and the abuse of power and vote buying that the huge transfer of money and independence from the private sector to the public sector caused and will undoubtedly cause again.
PS- As of the writing of this review, it appears you either love this book or you hate it as there are only 5 star reviews and 1 star reviews. However, if you read the reviews, you'll notice that those who have given it 5 star reviews have clearly read the book as they either quote from it or recount specific stories or facts mentioned in the book. On the other hand (again, as of this writing) the 1 star reviews don't mention a single specific point in the book and attempt to refute it. It seems pretty clear that they haven't actually read the book. If they have read it (which I doubt), they choose to review it with ad-hominem attacks, claims of bias (a historian with a world view??!!...I'm shocked!)and irrelevant rants about Bush etc. Please, do us all a favor.. if you want to attack a book at least read it and make specific logical refutations, don't simply pile on trite cliches and emotional appeals that have nothing to do with the author's scholarship.
Please, no more new deals November 16, 2008
M. Randall
80 out of 95 found this review helpful
Folsom has delivered a book that is tough to put down. While flying to a conference the other day, I was reading New Deal or Raw Deal and telling my friend (who was reading another book) how great Folsom's book is and talking about some key points brought up by Dr. Folsom. I left my seat for a moment; when I returned, my friend was reading Folsom's book, and I had a hard time getting it back.
Roosevelt helped create major rifts between those who were wealthy and those who were poor and middle class. He even indicated he did that to win the election rather than pursue what was best for the country. He tried to stack the Supreme Court and used the IRS to harass his major critics.
I've had to remind myself repeatedly that this is not a fictional work and that it is about a president in the USA rather than a dictator in some distant country. For example, the New Deal's birth of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 was bizarre. "It allowed American industrialists to collaborate to set the prices of their products and even the wages and hours that went into making them. Leaders in all industries, from steel and coal to shoulder pads and dog food, were invited to sit down and write codes of fair competition that would be binding on all producers in their industry. Laborers were often allowed to organize, and anti-trust laws were suspended." (pp. 43-44) The result was that many big companies could easily take business from smaller companies because the larger companies controlled the price fixing. An example Folsom uses is Jacob Maged of Jersey City, NJ. After 22 years of running a successful small business pressing clothes, Maged's reputation was one of quality work at a reasonable cost. The NRA then demanded that he charge 40 cents to press a suit instead of 35 cents. He was sent to jail and given a $100 fine for refusing to increase his prices.
Folsom has thoroughly documented the facts in the book, including several pages of sources.
By the end of the book, it is no mystery whether Roosevelt orchestrated the New Deal or a raw deal.
This book is incredibly timely. The most disturbing part is it seems like we are headed in the same direction today.
About Time Someone Took on the New Deal November 14, 2008
DR L. SCHWEIKART
56 out of 73 found this review helpful
Burton Folsom, a Professor of History at Hillsdale College, already has one classic to his credit: "Myth of the Robber Barons." Now he offers a concise, yet detailed, revision of the Leuchtenberg-Schlesinger myth that Franklin Roosevelt "saved" capitalism. In both his introduction and concluding remarks, Folsom assesses why the legend arose that Roosevelt had "brought us out of the Depression." He engages in a brief analysis of what caused the Great Depression, frequently noting that the economists have left the historians in the dust: the majority of economists today neither think that business failures caused the Great Depression, or that Roosevelt's policies did much to temper it, let alone solve the crisis.
Folsom assesses adequate blame to Herbert Hoover, though not (as is commonly portrayed) as a wild-eyed laissez-faire capitalist, but as a meddling Progressive in the mold of Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt in many ways merely continues, but greatly expands, Hoover's programs. One of the more interesting chapters deals with the NRA and its price fixing schemes. Here we had an agency of the federal government telling tailors what they could charge to hem a pair of pants! The NRA, thankfully, was brought down by a butcher who, in the process of selling chickens, allowed his customers to (imagine this!) select the chicken they wanted. The NRA goons attempted to force him to demand that they blindly take the first chicken that came within reach. In the subsequent court decision, the NRA was ruled unconstitutional. By that time, at least one businessman, who thought he couldn't charge the high prices demanded by the NRA or lose his customers, languished in jail, running his business from behind bars.
Folsom covers the better-known distortions of the New Deal---the minimum wage, Social Security, the banking regulations---but also reveals how Roosevelt used the IRS to smash political enemies, including editors whose columns he didn't care for. It's a chilling image, given talk of re-instituting the modern-day "gag rule" called the "fairness doctrine." Roosevelt used federal money as much to ensure his re-election as he did to stimulate a recovery, plastering wavering districts with cash until they arrived at the right ballot-box conclusions. Thus, as Folsom shows, the New Deal was not just an economic rebuilding program, but a political weapon designed to ensure the Democrat Party would hold power for much of the 20th century.
A good compliment to Amity Shlaes' "The Forgotten Man," Folsom sticks more to the specifics of how each piece of legislation retarded recovery. There is no question, when you finish, that Roosevelt stuck most Americans with a "raw deal" to ensure he remained in the White House for more than a decade.
Excellent book December 26, 2008
Francis Meyrick (LA, USA)
27 out of 34 found this review helpful
(Note: I own and have READ all of this book) (...)
Interesting book.
This is a very well written and well researched book. A keeper.
It is not one I read cover to cover over two days. It's more a case of reading a chapter, digesting it, cross referencing it, and then moving on. The prose, to my taste, is a little on the heavy, slightly cumbersome side. It's not a novel. It's not a racy read, like perhaps Fleming writes. It's more of an economics history text book. What IS attractive is that the style is balanced, very fair, presenting BOTH SIDES of the arguments. That makes it a good research book. It avoids shrill indignation, or fatuous adulation. It is timely, with, on the one side, many advisers of Mr Obama, publicly touting some similar 'big government spending' policies and attitudes, whilst presenting them as excitingly new and original. That is historically simply not correct. Just read the book and see how intensely Roosevelt tried to wield the clout of Big Government. I believe this book gives a better insight into the arguments for and against the New Deal. I feel there was a well meaning idealism at work (former social workers Hopkins and Perkins et all meant well), Roosevelt indubitably (The First Hundred days, etc) was not a Coolidge, and put his back into it. But against that, this book raises again the shadow side of FDR and his policies, which today, only the true devotees choose to wholly ignore. The machinations, the sledge hammer political approach, the war on the "economic Royalists", the "court packing" fiasco, the cynical use of the IRS to persecute his detractors, the 'taxpayer dollar bombardment' of swing states, etc, etc. Many reasoned studies today attack FDR pretty furiously. Defenders of FDR mostly seem to just ignore such misguided babbling, and I'm always on the hunt for good, reasoned, New Deal apologies. However, let me say no matter which side you prefer, the extreme laissez faire minimalist Coolidge approach, or the heavy 'beneficient hand' of Big Government, you will find in this book many good summaries of the principle arguments, for and against.
Mr Obama himself, I suspect, knows more than some give him credit for, and is astute enough to know government stimulatory ('anti-cyclical')spending is a double edged sword, which needs very careful handling lest it cut the wrong way. The deficit economic theories of Keynes (who met with Roosevelt, and didn't get along too well) have been widely challenged. Many argue against them, saying "Tried, tested...and failed". However,others hold a polar opposite view, and argue that FDR should have spent more, not less, and that the same massive government spending today,in 2009, is the only way forward. Still others allege a common misconception exists today of what Keynes was actually saying!
However, read the book and draw your own conclusions. And enjoy, as I did, checking thoughtfully on the historic 1930's backdrop to today's intense economic debate. The stakes... are high.
I have a lot of areas highlighted. Some examples:
"Federal Aid encourages the expectations of paternal care on the part of Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character".(p.77)
"This historic shift to using federal dollars for local relief profoundly changed the American work ethic" (p.81)
"Such a system tended to make liars out of everyone involved. Governors and mayors would shed abundant tears telling Hopkins and Roosevelt of their financial hardships; Hopkins and Roosevelt then listened and pretended to dispense FERA money solely on the basis of need, not on political considerations." (p.82)
(p.132) "Forbes magazine protested that "a fundamental motive of the New Deal is to wage war against bigness in business."
(p.132) Roosevelt encouraged this fight and tore into business in his State of the Union message in January 1936. He condemned the "selfish power" and the old 'resplendent economic autocracy' that was fighting his 'new instruments of public power.' Roosevelt added, "In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people."
Hm. You can imagine the raucous cheers. These are fighting words, unquestionably encouraging a class hatred. Was that good for America? If you love FDR, and many people do, I fully respect that, then you are however faced with the requirement to face the often heard complaint that the entrepreneurial class (ranging from small to big) was discouraged from launching new business ventures and investments, and creating employment. Uncertainty undermined confidence.
Next question might be: "Did that matter?" If you feel it didn't matter, then I would like to hear your reasoning, and your notion of what America stands for.
I hate to say it, but if you like FDR and his policies, then you will probably growl your way through this book. Folsom does not pull any punches.
(p.133) "Roosevelt's next step was to impose yet another tax on business - this one a tax on all undistributed corporate profits."
(P.133) "Businessmen may have been nearly unanimous in criticizing this new tax on profits, but Roosevelt believed it was a vote-getter in November, and throughout the election year he hammered away at "economic royalists" and "malefactors of great wealth".
I don't doubt it WAS a vote-getter. Good for Roosevelt. The question one might ask: Was it good for the country?
And one I really chuckled about, "With so much help from most reporters in so many areas, Roosevelt sometimes became careless in telling the truth." (p.228)
"So much help from most reporters in so many area" is a criticism, no, a devastating condemnation of the impartiality/objectivity of the media at that time. Many of course make the same somber assessment of today's trendy so-called 'liberal' media. Who, oddly enough, don't seem to be alarmed at the steady non-liberal (in the old, classic sense) erosion of freedom, and the ever growing boot print of bigger and bigger central government. This book illuminates some of the cynical,manipulative origins of this insidious, ongoing process. The unethical undermining of American democracy's (beautifully eloquent) founding idealism, and its replacement with a 'no holds barred', and 'the end justifies the means' approach to fooling and bamboozling the voting masses. (Many of whom were tragically desperate, and aching for the coming of a true savior.) How an elite, puffed up with hubris, arrogant and inflexible, dragged down the Old Jeffersonian America. If it ever existed?
But against that, I think it also shows the tragedy of good intentions, real problems, real hurt, real despair. I refuse to believe there was not a great deal of good in the motivations of many of the key New Deal players.Some led extraordinarily dedicated lives. Good did come out of it. As usual, nothing is black and white.
If you are considering this book, check out the "contents" page. It is laid out well, very clear, and it makes it very easy to leaf back and forwards afterward and look something up.
This is an excellent read. Now I need to go read another book which is more sympathetic to FDR, and once again contrast the arguments. I'm wide open to reading suggestions. I have several more FDR books on my wish list, and I shall review them all over time. Trying very hard not to be biased, and willing to sincerely weigh all counter arguments...
Peace. Enjoy the read.
PS: Please "comment" constructively if you feel I am missing the point, or if you can recommend further reading to illustrate positive New Deal accomplishments not properly brought out in this book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 115
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