Huge government tax increases, enormous increases in government spending for “welfare” programs, an increase of the federal government’s share of Gross National Product (GNP) upward from 16.4% to 21.5%, and a general expansion of governmental regulatory authority over major sectors of the private economy. Do these sound like the policies of the Obama Administration? They obviously are, but they were also the very policies of a prior American Administration: Herbert Hoover, back in the years 1929 to 1932. Hoover’s policies were of course followed by those of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, but Roosevelt was simply expanding what Hoover had already put in place. What makes this interesting is that we’re all taught in school that Herbert Hoover’s policies created the Great Depression because they were based on capitalism and free enterprise, while FDR saved the nation because he implemented policies of government intervention in the economy. In actual fact, Hoover initiated the policies that both led to and created the Great Depression, but these policies were essentially the same ones that FDR merely built upon later. Hoover’s policies — almost exactly the ones being imposed by the Obama Administration today — resulted in massively increased and unprecedented unemployment rates, helping propel FDR into office. The Great Depression, by the way, did not end nor even improve under FDR’s terms in office. Unemployment stayed high all the way until World War II, when the fear of annihilation by Hitler and the Japanese led FDR to back away from his interventionist policies and let business alone so as to build the weapons to fight the war. War didn’t create jobs, but war did scare FDR into backing away from the private economy — and that created jobs.
So if you seriously think Obama’s policies are going to lead to less unemployment and an overall better economy, then remember Hoover and FDR. The Great Depression lasted almost twenty years. Unless or until Obama’s policies are entirely reversed, the Great Recession might last even longer. And don’t count on an Islamic-inspired, nuclear World War III to get us out of this one.