Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression [by] launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938, an effort to increase mass purchasing power. The New Deal had in fact engaged in deficit spending since 1933…Now they had a theory to justify what they were doing. Roosevelt explained his program in a fireside chat in which he finally acknowledged that it was therefore up to the government to “create an economic upturn” by making “additions to the purchasing power of the nation.”…

When the Gallup poll in 1939 asked, ‘Do you think the attitude of the Roosevelt administration toward business is delaying business recovery?’ the American people responded ‘yes’ by a margin of more than two-to-one. The business community felt even more strongly so. Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau confided to his diary May 1939: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot.”

Sound familiar at all? Seriously.

Here are a couple of great selections from the UCLA study; and remember, this was written in 2004:

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”…

“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.“

Again, this study was done by world-class UCLA economists. These guys are, by any account, some of the brightest and most intelligent economic minds in the entire world. I just wish someone in our current administration was actually studying this stuff too.

Source: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate / UCLA Newsroom

The class in question had insisted that President Obama’s socialism would work and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich – that it would be the great equalizer.

The professor decided use President Obama’s plan as a class experiment. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D. No one was happy.

For the 3rd test the class average was an F and the scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings. No one wanted to study if all of their hard work would simply reward someone else.

All of the students failed. The professor told them socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great – when government takes all the reward away, no one will want to try or to succeed.

via Heidi B. – Thanks Heidi!

The politician is Russ Carnahan (D) and the town hall meeting was conducted on the campus of St. Louis U.

This is where I ended up…

The news CNN could have reported if it wasn’t busy adoring Obama’s every move: