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Comment by hollerith | Hacker News Reader

Causal relationships can be hard to discern. Some say that FDR's policies extended the downturn to 10 years whereas recovery from previous downturns was much quicker.

(Also, it is not clear to me how any of this is relevant to "The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive".)

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These are probably the same people who say that environmental regulation is not necessary because companies would clean up pollution anyways.

"If the health benefits of pollution were so bad, insurers would pay plants to install scrubbers."

Can you provide references? This is the first I’ve ever heard of this.

For example, Murray Rothbard argued in America’s Great Depression (1963) that both Herbert Hoover and FDR worsened the economic downturn through interventionist policies. He believed FDR’s price and wage controls, massive public spending, and business regulations stifled economic recovery.

My point is not that the person I was replying to is definitely wrong about FDR's policies, but rather that the effects of FDR's policies are uncertain enough that the fact that FDR imposed them in the 1930s cannot credibly used to lend strong support to any argument for any economic policy to be imposed today. The post-WWII economic boom for example happened after most of FDR's policies had been repealed.

Thanks for the reference. I generally agree that, from a very high-altitude, it's difficult to know whether New Deal policies shortened the depression given that WWII shook up the US so much. However, there are many things introduced during that time that have had a visceral effect on the average American's quality of life, saved lives, and would be terrible to abandon: the FDIC, the construction of a massive amount of infrastructure, social security, etc.

I don't think your comment adds clarity to the line of questioning and reasoning.

I think it's damaging to clear thinking by muddying the waters.

I give you an example of returning the favor to you:

"Causual relationships can be hard to discern. Some say when people spout a spurious claim without evidence nor citations that falls in line with the entrenched structural power interests it simply shuts down critical thinking and causes people to not advocate for themselves and their own self interests which lets deep systemic issues fester and rot and leading to mass violence."

https://a.co/d/9rTmcYe https://a.co/d/5aIpwPC https://a.co/d/0ujVgWg https://a.co/d/0g5HHDh

Of course libertarian ideologues will argue FDR was the Big Bad. They are arguing from ideology, not science.

FDR committed the grave sin of making a lot of rich people slightly less rich, in the short term. Deregulation is the answer to everything, including the problems caused directly by lack of regulation and governance. Hilarious.

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