Did the New Deal actually prolong the great depression?
The Great Depression was the most important economic event in twentieth-century American history, yet we know surprisingly little about it. Though the popular impression is that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies brought about recovery, economic research developed in recent decades suggests the New Deal prolonged the Depression. The most troubling issue is the persistence of high unemployment throughout the New Deal period: At no point during the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent. Living standards remained depressed until after World War II. Stanford University’s David Kennedy seems to be the only major political historian to mention any of the research about the effects of New Deal policies. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear…
