Fit to be Fried

Ten kids in cadillacs,
stand in line for welfare checks
hey, let’s all leech off the state,
Gee, the money’s really great…

The Circle Jerks, When the shit hits the fan

In the last post of this series, I said that America had become a socialist nation.

Apparently, this doesn’t bother people all that much, or maybe it’s just that people didn’t bother reading the post in full, instead skipping along to the archives in hope that there’s been some more Bakken Formation news¹. How disappointed those folks must be to get a history lesson instead?
Too bad, sez I.

You see, it’s important to know these things, and a lot of people just don’t know what’s been going on around them. Truth be told, it’s been going on for a long time, even at the height of McCarthy-era, “Red Scare” paranoia.

Throughout the time spanning the end of WWII, and on to the present day, our country has almost constantly engaged in rampant, constantly-increasing deficit spending². In fact, the National debt of the United States has not been reduced since the Eisenhower administration. Rampant government spending has plagued this country since the Great Depression, and despite every screaming ounce of common sense out there, it just keeps going.

The two biggest offenders in this monstrous crime against the American people are Defense and Health and Human Services spending, the former favored by Republicans, and the latter by Democrats. Spending on HHS is higher than spending on defense, but not by much when compared to the spending in all other areas. In fact, the only other department that receives even close to the federal funding these two agencies get, is the Treasury Department, and this is just to pay down the interest on the National Debt. In other words, no matter what you may have heard during the Clinton administration, there is no such thing as a budget surplus. (more…)

OK, so what was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the New Deal, and crippling national debt, and the loooong, slow, agonizing death of the American Spirit.

Proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Roosevelt adopted the Keynesian model of fiscal policy, which was to run deficits during hard times, for fear that the private sector would not invest enough to bring the country out of a recession. He also followed Great Britain’s lead in abandoning the gold standard in 1933, and forced citizens to sell all but the most trivial amounts of privately held gold to the government. After that number, he raised the price of gold from $20.67 to $35.00 and cut the value of the dollar nearly in half. In the midst of such devastatingly bad decisions, FDR instituted Social Security and what would later become our modern welfare system, and lowered taxes. Contrary to where you might think things are going, these were not in and of themselves bad ideas, and did much to help the economy, although not in the way the Keynesian economists had hoped. Instead of funneling the new income afforded to them through social programs (in combination with a sharp downturn in unemployment) back into the economy,¹ people started to pay back the debts they had been accruing over the years.

Things actually looked bright for a while, until a sudden backslide in 1937 caused unemployment to rise again, and production and profits to waste away. Roosevelt’s answer to this was to nearly abandon any attempt to balance the national budget and instead spend money we didn’t have like there was no tomorrow.²Government spending tripled between 1930 to 1940, as did the national debt, from 16 billion to 72 billion.

Though employment was slowly improving even after 1937’s nosedive, numbers would not significantly improve until the advent of World War II and the subsequent drive to provide supplies, men and services to support the war effort. At the height of the big deuce, unemployment dropped to about 3%, and have never risen above 8% to this day³ Even though the economy seemed to be getting better, the damage from FDR’s deficit spending practices had been done. Though most of the New Deal was rallied against and done away with by the advent of the war⁴, the powers of the federal government were greatly enhanced, and our long slide towards becoming a socialist state had begun.

Did he just say “socialist state”, referring to the United States?

What would you call it?

I began this series intent on filling you in on the decline of the American Spirit , and believe me, this history lesson is leading somewhere. In my next post, “The Land of the Free” keeps taking and giving it away…⁵

This one goes out to all those who think that it’s the government’s job to provide them with healthcare, free money when they can’t pay their bills, college education, food, a roof over their heads, personal happiness, etc…

“You must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not worke shall not eate (except by sickness he be disabled:) for the labors of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine an hundred and fiftie idle loyterers”

Captain John Smith of Jamestown Colony uttered that famous phrase back in the early 1600’s, and for hundreds of years, this was the prevalent attitude in America- the term American Spirit came to embody a can-do attitude combining initiative, ingenuity, integrity and ambition. Men made their fortunes from the sweat of their brow and the power of their minds, and, combined with a tradition of inventiveness sparked by founding fathers Benjamin Franklin¹ and Thomas Jefferson, this spirit caused America to flourish in the face of constant adversity. America, as a young nation, was beset on all sides with forces that would do anything to see it fail², and yet it refused to die even through one of the bloodiest Civil Wars the planet had ever seen. Even up to the 1960’s, this was the case, as evidenced in President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote:”Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.

Where is the American Spirit now?

I wish I knew.

What I do know, is how it started to dwindle

In 1929, a combination of rampant debt, a sudden crash in the stock market, a decline in exports, and a shortage of money caused what was known as the Great Depression. Keep in mind that the Great Depression was a worldwide occurrence, not isolated to the U.S.; People worldwide were out of work and starving as a direct result of mistrust on the international trade market, which caused prices to rise uncontrollably while wages and jobs dwindled. The unemployment rate had soared to over 25% by 1932, a rate that has never been exceeded since, nor has been even halfway matched since 1940. To combat the depression Roosevelt instituted what was known as “The New Deal”, which was, in short, an attempt to give everyone everything they wanted ³.

Though the New Deal can be credited with such notable improvements as the repeal of Prohibition, and the stabilization of the banking system, it was criticized soundly by both the right and left wing of American politics and eventually resulted in a national debt that has never been paid off to this day, and in fact never stopped growing in size. ⁴

More on this Wednesday, I get the feeling this one’s gonna have to be a series…

The New Deal,Roosevelt,Social Programs,lies,Government,Great Deprssion,National Debt,Unemployment