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How is it that serious economists and lawmakers want to follow FDR’s economic policies as some sort of model to follow? People who want to revive his ideas are absolutely insane. FDR took a recession that was ending (it was already four years old when he took office in 1933) and he single-handedly created the longest depression in the history of the United States that virtually lasted ten full years! Furthermore, the only reason it ended was not anything FDR did, but it was economic growth related to  WWII.

(One might argue that technically we were not in a depression for the full ten years because some parts of the economy were growing. But going from 18% unemployment to 14% unemployment is still depression in my book.

There is a real concern with Biden mimicking FDR’s playbook. After all, that’s what Obama did — and Biden was his Vice President! Obama’s policies resulted in the poorest recovery since FDR’s New Deal by doing what FDR did: raising taxes, over-regulating businesses, giving organized labor excessive power, instituted policies that discouraged people from working and hurt international trade. 

What is Biden doing? Ending Trump tax cuts, raising the top federal income-rate back to 39.6%, raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 26.5%, increasing regulation, expanding energy policy and has even created a Civilian Climate Corp for jobs, reminiscent of the old FDR Civilian Conservation Corp. With low unemployment and many areas struggling to find enough workers to fill open positions — like the service industry and manufacturing.  As the economy is well underway recovering from COVID, the last thing we need to do is to spend billions of dollars on a new big government program that provides climate-related jobs.  

Choosing to model FDR is only going to cause serious economic problems for this country, yet Biden doesn’t seem to think that’s a problem. Like FDR and Obama, continued government interventions and expanding government programs -far less productive than the private sector – will stifle economic growth. Because of this, we face an unnecessarily prolonged economic recovery.