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New Deal Or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (2008)

by Burton W. Folsom Jr.(Favorite Author)

4.13 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1416592229 (ISBN13: 9781416592228)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Threshold Editions

review 1: Hats off to Burton Folsom for diligently compiling the research necessary for this work. While I don't dispute his facts and agree emphatically that the New Deal era continues to cripple American prosperity, listening to thousands of concrete examples of FDR's deceitful, manipulative, scandalous, power lusting soul, was difficult to bare(even for me)for the 11 hrs and 20 mins of this audiobook. Ellsworth Toohey put it best when he said, "Don't bother to examine a folly—ask yourself only what it accomplishes." As long as we continue to point fingers and debate particular policies while ignoring the principle ideas on which they stand, we can never correct the problem. This book like so many others from competent intellectuals fails to highlight the connection between po... morelitics and ethics. It is this failure, whether it be made by scholars, politicians, or businessmen, that has allowed people to cling to the idea that being on 'the dole'(no matter what it's form) is morally acceptable(and somehow often morally superior). As long as this remains so FDR's "Raw Deal" will live on.
review 2: A very different look at Roosevelt's New Deal. Breaking away from the More common progressive or liberal look at the New Deal, Folssom takes an economic conservative approach to looking at the New Deal. He challenges FDR's assumption of underconsumption as the problem with his economic decisions leading to New Deal programs. He claims the New Deal programs prolonged the depression and that a different approach of lowering taxes and tariffs to stimulate business would have provided better results. The weakest chapter in his presentation is his speculative chapter on how more conservative economic approaches to the New Deal would have been better. The author does acknowledge that the chapter is speculative. less

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