In 1935 the federal government spent $9.2 billion with a deficit of 5.5 percent of GDP. In 1936, the presidential election year, the federal government would spend $10.2 billion, 14 percent more, and run a deficit of 6.6 percent of GDP. President Roosevelt was running for reelection and he meant to win. Roosevelt had programs for farmers, for labor, for pensioners, for veterans. He passed a Rural Electrification Act to bring power to rural areas. He had programs for building schools, swimming pools, courthouses, and libraries in every community in the country. And it seemed to be working. Within a year unemployment dropped from 22 percent to 14 percent. Just to make sure that the voters were getting the message the president advanced a plan to increase taxes on savings and undistributed corporate earnings, and sent form ISC9 to every voter to remind them that they "would have something to live on" after they were too old to work. The president was stringing the sinews of patronage that would bind working Americans to the Democratic Party for the next 45 years.

In the presidential election campaign, President Roosevelt swept the election in a landslide of 46 states to 2 and a popular vote of 61 to 37 percent over Kansas Governor Alf Landon. In the Senate elections the Democrats picked up 5 net seats, and in the House elections an additional 12 seats. In the new 75th Congress the Democrats reached a high water mark, controlling the Senate with 76-16 seats, and in the House with 334-88 seats.

all years | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935 | 1936 | 1937 | 1938 | 1939

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1929-1939: “A Decade that will live — in stupidity.”

Why Stuck on Stupid?

Seventy years ago the leaders of both US political parties turned away from the policies that had created an economic powerhouse we call the Roaring Twenties. For ten long years Americans suffered through wrenching economic dislocations: deflation, inflation, a four-year economic contraction, endless unemployment, mindless political experiments, and ruthless attacks on businessmen for political gain as their leaders stayed Stuck on Stupid.

Today, after a twenty-five year economic boom, Americans are once more faced with a political elite that wants to monkey with success. It wants to raise tax rates. It wants to restrict trade. It wants to increase government power.

It’s time to look back and remind ourselves how it came to be, starting in 1929, that America got itself Stuck on Stupid. Otherwise it could happen again.

— Christopher Chantrill

SOURCES

Historical Financial Statistics - The Center for Financial Stability
the start of a site with major government stats

Flesch Kinkaid Readability Calculator
returns grade level and readability index.

Cook Partisan Voting Index
gives a quick look at the partisan rating of each congressional district.. There are currently 10 Democratic-leaning districts represented by Republicans and 71 Republican-leaning districts represented by Democrats.

Measuring Worth - GDP Series for US and UK
includes GDP and chained GDP for US; GDP and chained GDP for UK

Republicans: Still Happy Campers
Year after year, Republicans are happier than Democrats. Even in 2008

American National Election Study 2004
Berkeley's control panel

University top 200 in full
Harvard is still #1

Gross Domestic Product by State
from Bureau of Economic Analysis

UAH monthly satellite record
UAH satellite temperature record on global temperatures

The world's 50 most powerful blogs
at least as far as the lefty Guardian is concerned.

IRS Income Tax Share Table
the rich pay the income taxes

No Freedom Without Economic Freedom
US is fifth on Economic Freedom Index this year. Is that good enough?

Liberal-Conservative Self-Identification
from 1972.

US Current Dollar and "Real" GDP (xls)
US GDP series from 1929 to present

US GDP Percent Change from Preceding Period (xls)
US GDP change from 1929 to present

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Democratic Capitalism

Three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism