How High is Up?

A simple question, but can it be answered?  When I was growing up in the hometown of Franklin Delano Roosevelt we obviously learned a lot about how he saved America during the great depression.  His administration created thousands of service jobs paid for with government deficit spending.  He created the Civilian Conservation Corp or CCC to give out-of-work young men a place to labor, and at the same time improve the infrastructure of the nation.  As part of his “New Deal” he created the Works Progress Administration or WPA, whose mission was to employ millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects.  There was the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Youth Administration and a plethora of other government programs all designed to give the nation a lift up.

How strikingly similar to the approaches we see being sounded out by the current administration.  All based on the government creating make work jobs that will be paid for by the government through increased borrowing, or increased taxes.  The intent is to get the economy moving by giving those who need it a lift up and money to spend.

Now that I am older, more traveled, a little wiser, and just a little tired of bigger governments led by people who make decisions not based on sound logic, but on some Power Point presentation with a good speaker, I question the value of a government spending untold millions, and billions of dollars just to give people a hand up.

How much shorter would the great depression have been if the government had opened the door for industry to begin manufacturing instead of taking the workforce onto the public payroll?  How much better would we have been if instead of doubling or tripling funding to public works we had reduced taxes so business could invest?  Don’t get me wrong there were things that led to the crash of the stock market, and the creation of the SEC was probably a warranted approach, but exactly how well has the SEC done its job since then?  Has it stopped fraud and Ponzi schemes in the stock market?  Are we better or worse off for having it?  I don’t know, but it is a powerful regulatory agency that still gets it wrong a lot of the time.

When the government provides a hand up for the unemployed does it encourage them to find work, or to draw benefits?  When the government provides a lift up to the housing market by subsidizing home loans for people who can’t afford to pay their mortgages does it create a stable building industry or does it create a foundation bound to crumble?

So I ask, when the government becomes as massive as it is today, where it wants everyone to have upward mobility whether they work for it or not, can it survive?  How high up will this government propel us?


Update:  I found this video and it sums up the great depression better than I do.
Top 3 Myths About the Great Depression and the New Deal | LearnLiberty