What is the legacy of the New Deal?
ALAN BRINKLEY: The legacy of the New Deal – in other words, the things that the New Deal did that have had a lasting effect on American life – include a great number of quite different things. There’s the creation of the foundations of the modern welfare state through the Social Security Act. There is the creation of the beginnings of the modern labor movement through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 and the formation of many large-scale unions that are still important today as a result. There were a wide range of financial reforms – the strengthening of the Federal Reserve Board, the federal insurance of bank deposits, the regulation of the stock market through the SEC and many other things that have created an increasing stability in the financial markets and in the financial world. There was a tremendous government investment in infrastructure in the 1930s, of a dimension greater than almost any other period in our history – dams, bridges, highways, public buildings, harbors
