Reasons why you think the New Deal (made by President Roosevelt) was a bad plan?

Question

We are learning about the new deal in school and I was just really curious what other peoples thought are.

Answer 1

The New Deal was an excellent plan. It gave people hope that they could pull themselves out of the great depression and redistributed the wealth from the hand of the few who obviously didn't care what happened to the majority of Americans. It led to the new GI Bill, which gave every returning WWII veteran an opportunity to get a college education and led to the growth of the middle class in this country. It could be argued that Roosevelt's New Deal saved this country from Communism. Since many starving and hopeless Americans were looking for some relief from the control of the labor exploitive capitalist and monopolist. And Communism was promising that relief.

Answer 2

The plan wasn't bad--it was brilliant, although the wealthy never forgave FDR for being a traitor to his class. One must remember that in 1932, about a third of the population was out of work. There was little or no social safety net--people who lost their life's savings often also lost their homes and their jobs and were forced to go to soup kitchens for food. The Socialist and Communist parties made great inroads in recruiting members during this time, and there was talk--just the beginnings, mind, but talk--of some sort of worker's revolution here like had happened in Russia.

Roosevelt's plan was brilliant in that it gave the workers some relief, literally, in the form of massive work programs, which were designed to build up and repair the infrastructure of the nation. There were writer's workshops and historians were enlisted to record oral history from the surviving pioneers and Civil War veterans. The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) used hydroelectric power to electrify the rural South. Unions were recognized and work rules (40 hour week) were set into place. Social Security was started to give the elderly some money - and dignity - in their twilight years. Banking reforms were instituted, including insuring people's deposits--in other words, bailing out defaulting banks (and conservatives only gripe about the taxes FDR imposed!).

One last thing---when Hoover was in office, WWI veterans marched on Washington, demanding their promised bonus from the government. Hoover chased them away with cavalry. When FDR took over, he sent Eleanor-- who took them coffee and sympathy. The bonus was not paid until it's time (which was a few years off) but the humane way in which FDR treated common Americans was another hallmark of his New Deal.

Had work not be found for Americans, had basic worker's rights and the social safety net not been put in place, there was a very real possibility that the Depression would have deepened, people would have become more desperate, and we could have had our own Communist Revolution. Those who moan because the rich had to pay a progressive income tax should always keep this in mind. The fact that Alf Landon, the GOP candidate in 1936, was beaten in a landslide (he only won Maine and Vermont, I believe) shows that the New Deal was overwhelmingly popular amongst the American people.

Answer 3

The New Deal was quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened to the country during the Depression. The main reason for this is that it massively increased government control over private affairs in the mistaken belief that doing so helped the economy. Regulations over businesses that served to make them less efficient and successful, incredible taxes upon the wealthy which allowed them to keep far less of what they (in general) had earned, and a whole slew of failed initiatives and projects that ended up weakening the economy even further.

The main idea behind government regulations on businesses during the Depression came from the popular idea that the greed of these businesses' owners drew too much money away from the economy, thus causing poverty and mass unemployment. In reality, though, the economy had suffered depressions on the same scale as the Great one several times already in its history, and the economy had corrected itself without the government's help. You'll notice that the Depression hadn't officially ended even when we entered World War II; the government meddling around in it restrained economic growth by preventing businesses from spreading capital as efficiently as was required, and thus kept the Depression going for well over a decade. The big regulations came from the National Industrial Recovery Act, which took a large portion of businesses under its control and enacted (though I should say inflicted) such huge regulations on them that the only way many of them managed to survive after the depression was through government subsidy. Henry Ford kept his company out of the NIRA scope, and was so successful that he actually managed to RAISE his workers' salaries while increasing production. (For the record, he was so successful that the government contacted soon after the NIRA was put into effect to purchase cars -- this came after they had very loudly torn him down for not joining NIRA. Odd.)

Perhaps my favorite example of failed New Deal projects is the Tennessee Valley Authority, which took over a large portion of farmlands and rivers in Tennessee and Kentucky. The TVA was intended to build dams, power plants, and new farmlands in order to stimulate the local economy. As it happened, many farmers were forced off of their lands and moved into the surrounding areas, so the farming economy around the TVA positively thrived. The dams were built so inefficiently that an area built for the same purpose in Oregon produced three times the amount of energy -- and this area was only a quarter of the size. Also, the dams were placed so badly that they caused massive flooding, rendering large tracts of land entirely unsuitable to farming for several years afterward. The project was eventually scrapped, leaving many projects unfinished to this very day.

I really can't give much more detail here -- I've taken up a lot of space and other people need to get in their two bits. I recommend to you the book FDR's Folly, by Jim Powell. It has many of the same facts I just gave you, with even more and a lot more detail. Further advice: take everything you learn in school with a grain of salt. People tend to treat FDR and the New Deal as the saviors of the country, when in reality they'll probably end up expediting our demise. Happy learning...

Answer 4

The main problem with the New Deal was that it was mainly a redistribution of wealth. It didn't help the economy like some people like to think. That happened because of WWll. It made us more dependent on government to solve our problems. Hope that helps a little.

Answer 5

It was a bad plan because:
1. It helped the poor (you don't want to do that!)
2. It restarted the economy, which had come to a standstill (and of course, that's bad!)
3. It involved sharing the wealth to some extent (that means some multimillionaires came up a few thousand dollars poorer)
Well, I guess it wasn't such a bad plan after all!
Oh yes - it contradicted the new republican right, that follows the philosophy of Gingrich and company. Of course, that is unforgivable.

Answer 6

new deal was bad because it is about more taxes and more spending and taking money away/steeling from the rich and giving to bums on the street.

plus just the fact that roosevelt was librul scum makes it a more badder policy. no librul has never done a good thing!

Answer 7

It was the beginning of government entitlements. Which is where most of our tax dollars go. I paid 8,000 this year to the federal government, so they could redistribute it.

Answer 8

it was not a bad plan. it pulled the US out of the great depression.