Repeating the New Deal: Evidence the Stimulus Made Things Worse

The folks at the Innocent Bystanders blog have been providing a wonderful service by tracking the current unemployment rate and comparing it to what Obama and his advisors predicted would happen - with and without the impact of their stimulus bill.



To those of us who study political economy, however, these results are not surprising since government spending programs take money from useful, high-return private investments and transfer it into low yield, wasteful government expenditures. To see how, FDR's New Deal programs actually lengthened and worsened the Great Depression, see Burton Folson, Jr.'s book, New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (2008).

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.