Big VS Small Government in the US: A Brief Historical Perspective

Most on this site do not care to read more than a few lines of gibberish regardless of their political leanings. This piece by Heather Cox Richardson, a highly respected historian, is not too long and very informative.
October 28, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
8 hr ago
In 1929, October 28 was a Monday, the opening night for New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Four thousand glittering attendees thronged to the elegant building on foot or in one of a thousand limousines to see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the melodramatic story of an innocent French girl seduced by wealth, whose reluctance to leave her riches for true love leads to her arrest, deportation to the wilds of America, and tragic death. Flash bulbs blinded the crowd, gathered to see famous faces and expensive gowns, as photographers recorded the arrivals of the era’s social celebrities.

No one toasting the beginning of the opera season that night knew they were toasting the end of an era.

At ten o’clock the next morning, when the opening gong sounded in the great hall of the New York Stock Exchange, men began to unload their stocks. So fast did trading go that by the end of the day, the ticker recording transactions ran two and a half hours late. When the final tally could be read, it showed that an extraordinary 16,410,030 shares had traded hands, and the market had lost $14 billion. The market had been uneasy for weeks before the twenty-ninth, but Black Tuesday began a slide that seemingly would not end. By mid-November, the industrial average was half of what it had been in September. The economic boom that had fueled the Roaring Twenties was over.

Once the bottom fell out of the stock market, the economy ground down. Manufacturing output dropped to levels lower than those of 1913. The production of pig iron fell to what it had been in the 1890s. Foreign trade dropped by $7 billion, down to just $3 billion. The price of wheat fell from $1.05 a bushel to 39 cents; corn dropped from 81 to 33 cents; cotton fell from 17 to 6 cents a pound. Prices dropped so low that selling crops meant taking a loss, so struggling farmers simply let them rot in the fields. By 1932, over one million people in New York City were unemployed. By 1933, the number of unemployed across the nation rose to 13 million people—one out of every four American workers. Unable to afford rent or pay mortgages, people lived in shelters made of packing boxes.

No one knew how to combat the Great Depression, but wealthy Americans were sure they knew what had caused it. The problem, they said, was that poor Americans refused to work hard enough and were draining the economy. They must be forced to take less. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Slash government spending, agreed the Chicago Tribune: lay off teachers and government workers, and demand that those who remain accept lower wages. Richard Whitney, a former president of the Stock Exchange, told the Senate that the only way to restart the economy was to cut government salaries and veterans’ benefits (although he told them that his own salary—which at sixty thousand dollars was six times higher than theirs—was “very little” and couldn’t be reduced).

President Hoover knew little about finances, let alone how to fix an economic crisis of global proportions. He tried to reverse the economic slide by cutting taxes and reassuring Americans that “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.” But taxes were already so low that most folks would see only a few extra dollars a year from the cuts, and the fundamental business of the country was not, in fact, sound. When suffering Americans begged for public works programs to provide jobs, Hoover insisted that such programs were a “soak the rich” program that would “enslave” taxpayers, and called instead for private charity.

By the time Hoover’s first term limped to a close, Americans were ready to try a new approach to economic recovery. They refused to reelect Hoover and turned instead to New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised to use the federal government to provide jobs and a safety net to enable Americans to weather hard times. He promised a “New Deal” for the American people.

FDR’s New Deal employed more than 8.5 million people, built more than 650,000 miles of highways, built or repaired more than 120,000 bridges, and put up more than 125,000 public buildings. It provided a social safety net for ordinary Americans, providing unemployment and disability insurance, as well as aid to widows, orphans, and the elderly. It supported labor and regulated business, banking, and the stock market. It invested in infrastructure, rebuilding roads and bridges, providing electricity to rural areas, and building schools, post offices, airports, and hospitals around the country. When World War II broke out, the new system enabled the United States to defend democracy successfully against fascists.

The new system undercut fascism at home, too, where its adherents had been growing strong, and reminded Americans that when the government supported ordinary people, they could build a strong new future.

@phranny said
Most on this site do not care to read more than a few lines of gibberish regardless of their political leanings. This piece by Heather Cox Richardson, a highly respected historian, is not too long and very informative.
October 28, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
8 hr ago
In 1929, October 28 was a Monday, the opening night for New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Four thousand ...[text shortened]... Americans that when the government supported ordinary people, they could build a strong new future.

@mott-the-hoople said
and you cant see how this administration is AGAINST “ordinary” people?

@mott-the-hoople said
and you cant see how this administration is AGAINST “ordinary” people?

@zahlanzi said
yep, they tried to spend 3.5 trillion dollars to improve their lives. They are against them.

@AverageJoe1
Ok, so you would not GIVE money or benefits, you and your white nationalist buddies would INCREASE taxes and KILL SS and medicare.
And that would be because you don't consider the poor to be actual people, just some kind of meaningless moving hologram.

@AverageJoe1 the role of government is to create conditions where businesses and employees can thrive. This means traditional infrastructure and making sure everyone everywhere in the nation has easy and inexpensive access to the Internet, higher education and health care. It means safe working conditions and a minimum wage that does not leave people in poverty after they work a 40 hour week. It means guaranteeing the kind of family leave other Western industrialized nations provide their citizens. The government should not be focused on increasing the wealth of the already rich at the expense of the workers and consumers who have created their wealth.

@Phranny
That argument means nothing to an avowed white nationalist.
He HATES Fed government. He WANTS the US to be 50 separate countries.

@averagejoe1 said
You are saying to dole out money. To make everyone happy. Have u looked at what your blessed trillions is earmarked for? Look, and explain which lives get improved by what.

@mott-the-hoople said
and you cant see how this administration is AGAINST “ordinary” people?

@averagejoe1 said
You are saying to dole out money. To make everyone happy. Have u looked at what your blessed trillions is earmarked for? Look, and explain which lives get improved by what.

@phranny said
@AverageJoe1 the role of government is to create conditions where businesses and employees can thrive. This means traditional infrastructure and making sure everyone everywhere in the nation has easy and inexpensive access to the Internet, higher education and health care. It means safe working conditions and a minimum wage that does not leave people in poverty after they wor ...[text shortened]... ealth of the already rich at the expense of the workers and consumers who have created their wealth.

@suzianne said
You have GOT to be joking.

You conveniently forget how Trump was actually against ordinary people. Except maybe on Election Day.

@Mott-The-Hoople
And you think that is BIDEN'S fault? He inherited a MESS that your god king ASSSWIPE EX POTUS LOSER left behind.

Try googling Dejoy, postmaster general. Trump appointed him SPECIFICALLY to screw up the elections by making postal service WAY slower than it used to be AND more expensive.

Trump HIMSELF voted by mail in ballots but he wants to stop anyone ELSE sending ballots through the mail with his BULLSHYTE claim mail in ballots are full of fraud WHICH THEY ARE NOT but of COURSE also from YOUR POV since your god king said there was massive fraud, in your so called mind there IS massive fraud, NON existent fraud, outside of a few cases, mostly REPUBS trying to cheat.

Also, they stopped shipping overseas.

THIS IS ALL ON THE SHOULDERS OF YOUR GOD KING POS TRUMP.

That is just ONE example.

And OF COURSE you figure it is ok to RIP infants from the arms of moms at the southern border and put those babies in CAGES, but of course from YOUR POV they are not even human, but dregs of society that we will have to put in jail or put on the dole.

Infants in cages is the most morally bankrupt episode in Trumpworld and it is a blight on our nation, a NATIONAL SHAME and now the REAL government recognizes the TERROR of those days and are giving compensation to those folks.

Which ALSO OF COURSE you would stop IMMEDIATLEY if YOU were POTUS since you don't consider them to be humans but some kind of sub human race not worth the effort to save.
You don't even CONSIDER there are jobs to do that your precious Proud Boys and such will never do like pick fruit in the fields.

Now fields are lying fallow because there is an extreme shortage of farm workers once more laying at the feet of your GODDDAM god king Trump.

That doesn't even BEGING to consider his actual CON games, like the fact he lost his so called Trump university which turned out to be a money maker for Trump but a loser uni for the students and that business got shut down AND he was fined TWENTY FIVE MILLION dollars as a direct result of the years of corruption and fraud in that so called uni.

That was not the result of going backrupt, that was the result of a COURT decision.

Oh, BTW, Which party is trying to stop the Biden agenda, you know, that multi trillion dollar bill to help ordinary people?

And OF COURSE since it is a democratic party bill you, your head firmly up Trumps ass, you will be against it even though it will in fact help common folk, EVEN YOU.

But of course a dem bill is useless and ONLY repubs can do government right to help ordinary people, right?

@sonhouse said
@Mott-The-Hoople
And you think that is BIDEN'S fault? He inherited a MESS that your god king ASSSWIPE EX POTUS LOSER left behind.

Try googling Dejoy, postmaster general. Trump appointed him SPECIFICALLY to screw up the elections by making postal service WAY slower than it used to be AND more expensive.

Trump HIMSELF voted by mail in ballots but he wants to stop anyon ...[text shortened]... course a dem bill is useless and ONLY repubs can do government right to help ordinary people, right?