Seems like a risky posture since FDR's term was going to end in early 1941 and without the 1940 Fall of France, I'm not sure that he can actually get re-nominated for a third term in 1940.
FDR dies in October 1940
- Thread starter sillygoose
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Seems like a risky posture since FDR's term was going to end in early 1941 and without the 1940 Fall of France, I'm not sure that he can actually get re-nominated for a third term in 1940.
sillygoose
Well-known member
I think he was planning on running again anyway. He was just very sneaky about how he got his 3rd nomination as he didn't even run in the primary, but got nominated at the convention and just swept it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_Democratic_National_Convention
That was all after the Fall of France, though; remove that, and there's no guarantee that you'll actually get the same outcome.
sillygoose
Well-known member
I highly doubt he was planning on ending with a 2nd term before the Fall of France. Personal opinion though based on lots of reading about him.
You might very well be correct. I do suspect that he would have retired in 1941 had WWII not broken out by then, though.
sillygoose
Well-known member
Maybe if he thought he couldn't get nominated or would lose the general. He actually sounds like an ego maniac and I think the failure of the New Deal really got to him; he wanted to leave on a high note to have a favorable place in history.
You know my own thoughts on this: The New Deal would not have failed had Keynesian stimulus spending not been stopped prematurely. They should have waited until unemployment reached normal levels and only then engaged in austerity.
sillygoose
Well-known member
Agree for the most part, though some policies, IIRC, did hinder the economy from being jump started. WW2 was the ultimate stimulus, but a major recession happened after the war and again in 1948-49. So stimulus alone isn't necessary enough to get the economy functioning on its own, even extreme amounts. Which is partly why the US has fought so many wars; a good excuse to spend more and keep the economy humming.
The military-industrial complex has also helped with stimulus spending, no? Not merely the wars, but also stationing a lot of US troops overseas and constantly spending a lot of money on that.
sillygoose
Well-known member
Yup. But much of that is basically the same effect as making holes and filling them in, rather than investing in useful infrastructure or industry.
What would have been a more useful investment here? Because there was a huge demand for US military support in Western Europe in the post-WWII years and decades, no?
sillygoose
Well-known member
Infrastructure, universal healthcare, exports.
Post-war stockpiles weren't that useful, see how the Korean war demonstrated that. Demobilization pretty much wiped out the standing military.
History Learner
Well-known member
This is why I write in Huey Long for every Presidential election.
Less meme-y, but a lot of the reason the economy was getting better in the mid-1930s is because FDR was overruled on the Veteran Bonus issue:
"'The gov’t last week paid a soldiers’ bonus of over two billion and as a result the veterans have been buying cars, clothing, etc. Streets are crowded and the highways are jammed with new cars. It begins to look like old times again.'" - Benjamin Roth’s diary, 6/25/1936 (Roth 2009, p. 172).
"The U.S. recovery from the Great Depression was nearly as exceptional as the Depression itself. After falling 27 percent between 1929 and 1933, real GDP rose by 43 percent between 1933 and 1937. Indeed, the economy grew more rapidly between 1933 and 1937 than it has during any other four year peacetime period since at least 1869.1 The most rapid growth came in 1936, when real GDP grew 13.1 percent and the unemployment rate fell 4.4 percentage points.2 Conventional explanations of the rapid recovery emphasize the economy’s self-correcting mechanisms and the effect of expansionary monetary policy and resulting expectations of inflation. The literature almost universally dismisses fiscal policy as a primary source of recovery before World War II.3 Economists have generally accepted E. Cary Brown’s (1956) statement that 'Fiscal policy . . . seems to have been an unsuccessful recovery device in the ’thirties--not because it did not work, but because it was not tried' (pp. 863-866).
"In fact, this paper demonstrates that fiscal policy, though inadvertent, was tried in 1936, and a variety of evidence suggests that it worked. The government paid a large bonus to World War I veterans in June 1936, and I find that within six months veterans spent roughly 70 cents out of every dollar received. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that absent the veterans’ bonus, GDP growth in 1936 would have been about 2.5 to 3 percentage points slower and the unemployment rate 1.3 to 1.5 percentage points higher...."
So--insofar as it made the passage of the veterans' bonus inevitable--the administration's failure to evacuate the veterans from the Florida Keys may have been one factor in FDR's landslide re-election! (I don't want to exaggerate here; the hurricane was only one reason for the passage of the bonus bill. Besides, if the economy in 1936 had grown by "only" 10 percent instead of 13, FDR would still have won, but it might have been closer...)
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sillygoose
Well-known member
Only problem is that the fiscal stimulus wore off pretty rapidly, especially when the government cut back on spending:
Same happened after WW2 when all the pent up spending was over by 1948-49:
Spending to make up for the lack of demand in the economy doesn't fix the economy on its own, you also need to set up a tax policy that prevents money from getting locked up at the top and continually is able to circulate. Problem is that requires a major redistribution of power and money in the economy that the elite refuse to accept. Arguably WW2 was at least in part based on the US government trying to fix the problem of lack of demand by globalizing their economic zone and power to have the biggest empire in history to absorb American production:
Roosevelt Confronts Hitler: America's Entry Into World War II
Following the inspiration of William Appleman Williams, the author argues that the Nazi threat to the American vision of an open economic international system was the central reason the United States went to war. Following different assumptions, other historians have made an equally strong case...
I cannot recommend that book more highly as it really demonstrates the material basis for American entry into the war. There of course were personal and ideological components as well, but the establishment in the US was very concerned about giving up power and actually having true democracy in the US, so they sought solutions in empire to head off the New Deal from expanding.
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Only problem is that the fiscal stimulus wore off pretty rapidly, especially when the government cut back on spending:
Same happened after WW2 when all the pent up spending was over by 1948-49:
Spending to make up for the lack of demand in the economy doesn't fix the economy on its own, you also need to set up a tax policy that prevents money from getting locked up at the top and continually is able to circulate. Problem is that requires a major redistribution of power and money in the economy that the elite refuse to accept. Arguably WW2 was at least in part based on the US government trying to fix the problem of lack of demand by globalizing their economic zone and power to have the biggest empire in history to absorb American production:
Roosevelt Confronts Hitler: America's Entry Into World War II
Following the inspiration of William Appleman Williams, the author argues that the Nazi threat to the American vision of an open economic international system was the central reason the United States went to war. Following different assumptions, other historians have made an equally strong case...www.foreignaffairs.com
I cannot recommend that book more highly as it really demonstrates the material basis for American entry into the war. There of course were personal and ideological components as well, but the establishment in the US was very concerned about giving up power and actually having true democracy in the US, so they sought solutions in empire to head off the New Deal from expanding.
Do you believe that without World War II, there's be soak-the-rich and Occupy Wall Street movements decades earlier than in real life?
BTW, I always found it interesting how the elites switched to Wokeness right after Occupy Wall Street started becoming a threat to them:
sillygoose
Well-known member
I mean the New Deal was created to head off the militant labor movement and guys like Huey Long. After WW2 there was basically a general strike involving millions of people that lead to all sorts of anti-labor laws by 1948. So by the mid-1930s that movement was already in swing and FDR was the means to head it off before it got real reforms in the US.
Oh that is well known in some circles online; people are well aware that identity politics and culture war is always used to keep the focus off of class and wealth issues.
r/stupidpol
r/stupidpol: Subreddit focused on critiquing capitalism and identity politics from a Marxist perspective.
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I mean the New Deal was created to head off the militant labor movement and guys like Huey Long. After WW2 there was basically a general strike involving millions of people that lead to all sorts of anti-labor laws by 1948. So by the mid-1930s that movement was already in swing and FDR was the means to head it off before it got real reforms in the US.
Oh that is well known in some circles online; people are well aware that identity politics and culture war is always used to keep the focus off of class and wealth issues.
r/stupidpol
r/stupidpol: Subreddit focused on critiquing capitalism and identity politics from a Marxist perspective.
Was Huey Long also an isolationist in addition to him being pro-working class?
And Yeah, I find it interesting just how much sex, gender, trans, religious, and racial fetishism there is among today's leftists relative to class fetishism. "Oh, you're a working-class white person? You're privileged! You're a queer non-binary kinky lesbian Muslim trans woman? You have so much intersectional privilege, sister!"
sillygoose
Well-known member
He was more focused on his domestic agenda. I think any isolationism would be to fix America first.Was Huey Long also an isolationist in addition to him being pro-working class?
And Yeah, I find it interesting just how much sex, gender, trans, religious, and racial fetishism there is among today's leftists relative to class fetishism. "Oh, you're a working-class white person? You're privileged! You're a queer non-binary kinky lesbian Muslim trans woman? You have so much intersectional privilege, sister!"
Seems like the product of too much college education and unchecked social liberalism being allowed to run amok plus media boosting.
Yeah, that makes sense. FWIW, I actually wouldn't mind a more honest discussion on some of these things. FWIW, in the past, some trans people, especially non-binary ones such as aspiring eunuchs, had trouble getting surgery in a safe, medical setting and were thus compelled to seek surgery in back-alleys. A more pro-trans medical climate would help these people get surgery safely. Ditto for righting historical wrongs towards minorities:
California beachfront returned to heirs of Black owners
In a ceremony on Wednesday, Los Angeles County officials presented the deed to prime oceanfront property to the heirs of a Black couple that were stripped of the land nearly a century ago.
www.nbcnews.com
But the Left has taken it too far with its suppression of opposing viewpoints ("cancel culture") and inconvenient facts/information--and of course doing things such as pressuring cis lesbians to have sex with trans women. And of course the Left is academia treats its own adjuncts like absolute shit, so how exactly can I take their claims about believing in social justice seriously?