"The New Deal" Versus The New Deal

Brad DeLong and Arnold Kling debate the new deal on The Wall Street Journal's website. Eventually, they wind up mostly debating large federal entitlement programs. At one point Brad does try to refocus by noting that Medicare and Medicaid came long after the New Deal. It's worth saying, however, that even Social Security as we understand it wasn't really created during the New Deal era. The initial program didn't cover huge swathes of the workforce, didn't include cost of living adjustments, etc. Read all about the history here and you'll see that the provisions that make Social Security controversial mostly came in the 50s and to some extent the 70s.

And yet it's this -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- that most people are really talking about when they talk about "the New Deal." Ronald Reagan is said to have won over the Reagan Democrats by expressing warm feelings for the New Deal but hostility to the Great Society. When people say that, however, that don't mean that Reagan gave the impression that he wanted to eliminate Medicare, scale back Social Security, and preserve a large series of important-but-obscure regulations to the financial services industry. They mean that Reagan gave the impression of a sympathetic view to large universal entitlement programs combined with hostility to narrowly targeted programs aimed at the poor and identified with the black underclass. And yet, the most controversial of these programs -- Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- actually does trace its origins to the New Deal.

Comments

Yes. Reagan was the White King of the Suburbs. His antagonism to the New Deal and the Great Society could be summed up as "Welfare Queens" and busing. The horrifying fake began his 1980 campaign by giving a States Rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi. (16 years after the Civil Rights murders there. It was a fresh memory.)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 7, 2007 10:43 AM

i mean, i'm happy to acknowledge that i'm an old guy and all and therefore remember their passage, but is it really possible that vast swaths of the american public think that medicare and medicaid were part of the new deal?

Posted by howard | February 7, 2007 10:59 AM

it really possible that vast swaths of the american public think that medicare and medicaid were part of the new deal?

Unfortunately, most Americans think the new deal is a game show hosted by Howie Mandel.

Posted by fasteddie | February 7, 2007 11:09 AM

I must say that the affection we liberals tend to have for the New Deal is inexplicably bizarre. The financial services regulations are, as you mention, very important, but who wishes we could bring back the National Industrial Recovery Act?

Posted by Elliot Reed | February 7, 2007 11:28 AM

And here I thought that you, as a lover of Canadian bands, had written about a very hip band (but not tragically hip) instead of a bunch of 70 year old gov't policies.

alas ...

Posted by new deal fan | February 7, 2007 11:35 AM

whoops ... make that

this
and
this

Posted by oops | February 7, 2007 11:36 AM

Elliot Reed, there is nothing in the slightest "bizarre" about an affection for the New Deal. You don't have to agree that each and every policy choice FDR made was correct to understand the vital importance of the New Deal to American history - is that really a question in your mind?

Posted by howard | February 7, 2007 12:03 PM

"And yet, the most controversial of these programs -- Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- actually does trace its origins to the New Deal."

This is technically true, but it omits an important part of the story. In southern states, ADC (later AFDC) blatantly discriminated against African Americans during the early decades of its existence. Indeed, ADC was structured as a state-administered program (in contrast to Social Security) precisely because southern segregationist Democrats insisted on it. (For the same reason, agricultural laborers and domestic servants--the occupations representing the bulk of southern Blacks at the time--were originally left uncovered by Social Security.)

It wasn't until the "rights revolution" of the 1960s and early 70s that AFDC became an entitlement in actual practice for African Americans in the South.

Thus, the the racially tinged politics of resentment of "welfare" are more or less correctly associated with the Great Society and its successors.

Posted by Knecht Ruprecht | February 7, 2007 12:16 PM

Elliot, I do not presume to talk for anyone else, but for me it all relates to the fundamentals of big L Liberalism. Liberalism, in my view never asserts that its programs will be perfect, but that we should use the best available emprical evidence to craft programs that strive toward a shared goal. That many of the programs enacted during the New Deal were not ideal structured, what is important is that FDR dramatically increased the ambitions for the shared goals.
I would add that often times empirical evidence will point toward doing nothing at all. However, a greatly expanded version of the welfare of the people became the purview of the government. I, for one, think that is the correct view, but this is also the reasons why the limited government people are so against.

Posted by theCoach | February 7, 2007 1:44 PM

There were crucial changes in AFDC in the 1960s: FDR had wanted it for widows, and opposed giving it to single mothers, but that distinction was swept away in the 1960s. Also, the amount you could get from AFDC was miserably low until people like Nelson Rockefeller started raising it to livable levels in Northern states in the 1960s. The collapse of marriage and rise of crime in the cities that followed these changes was so immediate that it showed FDR had been right.

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 7, 2007 3:00 PM

funnily enough, brad delong has a lot to say about the new deal today in the wall street journal, which he posted to his site here:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/02/arnold_kling_vs.html

for anyone questioning the reverence with which the new deal is held, i'd recommend reading....

Posted by howard | February 7, 2007 3:23 PM

All true. But the real revolutionary aspect of the New Deal was in public works project and the massive federal investment in roads, dams, public buildings, etc. No one talks about this but it changed the nation more than Social Security or the Great Society programs have.

Posted by Erik | February 8, 2007 3:36 PM