New Deal

Franklin Roosevelt’s Bogus Economic Bill of Rights

by Richard M. Ebeling January 16, 2024

Eighty years ago, on January 11, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his Annual Message to Congress (now known as the State of the Union Address). Its significance arises from his call for a new Economic Bill of Rights to accompany the existing Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. He wanted to codify as federal constitutional law an ...

The Libertarian Angle: FDR’s New Deal Destroyed Free Enterprise

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 22, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling discuss the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob and Richard discuss the New Deal and its effects that we are still feeling today. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

FDR Farm-Folly Lessons for Obamacare

by James Bovard May 1, 2014

As the Obama administration wreaks further havoc on health care, many people expect the politicians to recognize their follies and relent. However, history indicates that rulers will continue seizing new power regardless of how much wreckage results. The farm policy of Franklin Roosevelt exemplifies how politicians “double down” on their most brazen follies. Roosevelt’s Brain Trust agricultural planners had unlimited ...

New Deal Utopianism

by George Leef February 1, 2013

Back to the Land: Arthurdale, FDR’s New Deal, and the Costs of Economic Planning by C.J. Maloney (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2011), 292 pages. Drive south from Morgantown, West Virginia, and you soon come to the little town of Arthurdale. At the outskirts of town, there is a roadside plaque informing those who stop to read it that Arthurdale was ...

Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Fraud

by James Bovard February 22, 2011

President Obama has succeeded in seizing new power over health care and other swaths of American lives in part because previous presidents muddied Americans’ understanding of freedom. Most of the past century’s debates over the meaning of liberty have featured one politician after another who promised people true freedom, if only they would submit to increased government power. In the ...

Bursting the Myths of the Great Depression

by George Leef February 1, 2010

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal by Robert P. Murphy (Regnery, 2009); 272 pages. Government of all kind depends on elaborate mythologies to keep the people complacent in the face of constant attacks on their liberty, their property, and even their lives. Kings used to proclaim that they were divine or at least ...

New Deal Charades

by George Leef January 1, 2010

New Deal or Raw Deal? by Burton Folsom Jr. (Threshold Editions, 2008); 318 pages. The New Deal rescued the United States from the terrible depression caused by the instability of our capitalist economy. Thats the standard line peddled to gullible Americans by most history books, historians, and politicians. It was not surprising when Republican Speaker of the House Newt ...

Obama’s Link to “Old Iron Pants”

by Jim Powell August 1, 2009

Since Barack Obama pledged a “New New Deal” for the American people, he has been favoring a combination of more government spending, more government regulations, and more power for labor unions. This has led some observers to conclude that he might be drawing inspiration from “Old Iron Pants” — the hard-drinking, fast-talking Gen. Hugh Johnson, Time magazine’s 1933 “Man ...

Roosevelt’s Crusade against Gold

by Jim Powell June 1, 2009

Early in the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt became convinced that to get America out of the Great Depression, the federal government must gain total control over money. The Federal Reserve seemed to have been powerless during the contraction, so Roosevelt asserted the power of the presidency. He began demonizing gold. Why gold? For centuries, people have viewed gold as the ...

FDR’s Biggest Mistake During the Depression

by Jim Powell May 15, 2009

FDR didn’t know what to do about the Great Depression he inherited from Herbert Hoover, so he tried everything. He hiked taxes, spent more money, established monopolies, enforced cartels, filed antitrust lawsuits, promoted compulsory unionism, multiplied business regulations, denounced investors, and started welfare programs, public works projects, a big ...

FDR and Compulsory Unionism Destroyed Jobs

by Jim Powell April 16, 2009

For decades, labor unions struggled for power, but until the 1930s they had made little headway. Unions were based on force and violence, which repelled a substantial number of employees as well as employers.  The aim had been to raise the wages of members above market levels, but this was only ...

FDR’s Anti-Business Crusade

by Jim Powell April 10, 2009

In 1938, after having spent many New Deal years signing laws that banned discounting and established cartels, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt denounced “the concentration of economic control” that many of his laws promoted. He went on the attack against big employers, even though, with unemployment still in double digits, ...