[NU Sports] Roosevelt

[Hakirsch at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/19/2006 2:44:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tbng at suscom.net writes:

> Actually, the capitalist system was saved by World War II and the 
> industrial 
> boon necessary to support it.  Roosevelt's economic policies did little to 
> uplift a depression-bound economy.  He won a third term - by the smallest 
> margain of his four victories, by the way - not on his record of economic 
> gains but by promising to keep the United States out of war even though he 
> knew that was almost certainly impossible.  (My maternal grandfather did 
> some WPA work, and it did help tide over his large family for a while, but 
> economically it offered him nothing in the long term.  Only in the economic 
> glow following the war did he begin to gain financially.)  Roosevelt was a 
> stellar war time president who nonetheless would have been crucified had the 
> 
> press of his time had the same attitudes as today's fourth estate.  Tell Ken 
> 
> Janda he needs to read some more history books. 
> 

Well I  think Janda was on to something (of course he was just regurgitating 
others)---but the basic premise of buying off the dis-enfranchised might have 
saved us from having some sort of  economic revolution as so many people were 
in tough shape during the depression.  It is not the ending of the depression 
that saved us from Capitalism, but that some sort of safety net was provided 
for the first time ---this probably bought the country several years of 
internal peace, until the depression was finally over (whether due to the war , the 
fed or the government pump priming)

Harry