by Ralph R. Reiland –
Pushing his agenda for higher taxes on “the rich,” President Obama kicked off his December 6 speech in Kansas by saying his Kansas grandparents “shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression.”
In fact, the 1929 stock market crash turned into the long-running Great Depression because the counterproductive soak-the-rich policies of the federal government hadn’t “triumphed” in reversing the downturn.
Franklin Roosevelt’s forceful expansion of federal regulations and confiscatory taxation, his intimidation of “the rich,” encouragement of labor strikes, and half-baked policy experiments discouraged employers from hiring workers and provided strong disincentives to new business investment.
“From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped make the Depression Great,” writes Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. “The trouble, however, was not merely the new policies that were implemented but also the threat of additional, unknown, policies. Fear froze the economy, but that uncertainty itself might have a cost was something the young experimenters simply did not consider.” [Read more…]