End Uemployment Obama: Declare More Wars

JOHNATHAN Pearce notices how William Rees-Mogg is rewriting history. Note to Obama: unemployment falls in times of global conflict. Whisper it: does everyone need a job, much less want one? Some people are better at working than others - more productive; more efficient; more willing - so let them work.

Rees-Mogg “makes this statement in his generally admiring writeup on Roosevelt that is surely downright wrong. Not just a teeny-weenie bit wrong, but disastrously so for this whole argument:

In March 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated as president, he had to face the Slump. Unemployment was by then running at about 30 per cent. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, based on an extensive programme of raising employment through public works. Unemployment did actually fall to about 5 per cent by the time of Roosevelt’s second election victory in 1936. There continued to be stumbles along the way, particularly in 1937.

“Well according to official US statistics referred to here, unemployment certainly did not fall anything like as low as that during FDR’s 1930s period in the White House, and then only dropped significantly once the Second World War started.”

And kept falling…

Anorak

Posted: 9th, December 2008 | In: Money Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink