Originally Posted by u-Bob

The New Deal?

Who here has heard of the Depression of 1920? I bet almost no one. Why? Because the government did almost nothing at the time so that Depression (that was btw caused by the government intervention in the economy during the first world war) ended in about 18 months.

Who here has heard of the Depression of 1929, everyone. Why? Because government intervention turned it into the Great Depression.

To help the farmers the government wanted to raise the price of pork. So their solution was to lower the supply of pork so the price would go up and farmers would get more money for their pork. How did they accomplish that? They paid farmers to kill and destroy thousands of young piglets.

While people were starving the government was using tax dollars to pay farmers to destroy food.

To help the farmers the government wanted to raise the price of wheat. So their solution was again to lower the supply. They actually paid farmers to not grow wheat. Some farmers and even some corporations ended up buying more land so they could get tax dollars for every acre they hadn't worked. Then they would use the money to buy more land and then get even more tax dollars for every acre they hadn't worked, for every bushels they hadn't produced.

There's tons of examples like this. FDR (and his advisors) believed that the Depression was caused by low prices, so high prices (enforced by threats of violence, coercion...) would be the "solution". (btw: it is hardly a secret that if less production takes place, fewer workers will be needed by employers and unemployment will be higher.)

FDR increased taxes and regulated every type of business imaginable. The NIRA codes established minimum wages. Employers were told that they must bargain collectively with unions, which were given advantages in the bargaining process. All of these policies made labor more expensive. The inevitable result was: less employment.
During a period of weak or declining derived demand for labor, government policy pushed up the price of labor very significantly, causing employers to purchase less and less of it.

The New deal didn't end the Great depression, it made it worse. It was the (relative) 'neutering' of New Deal rules, regulations, policies and the reduction of the Federal budget in 1945 that allowed the economy to recover. In 1946 alone, private sector production went up with 1/3.

It was a (more) free market that ended the Great depression, not FDR's cartelization, unionization, price-increasing, wage-increasing, wealth-destructing, welfare state expanding policies.