The economic downturn that began in mid 1937 had ballooned unemployment from 14 percent in 1937 to 20 percent in 1938. In the spring President Roosevelt proposed a new $5 billion program of government spending to reverse the decline. The recession bottomed out at that moment and output increased 58 percent by 1940. He also appointed Thurman Arnold as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the anti-trust division of the Justice Department on the theory that the Great Depression was a consequence of monopoly power. A Civil Aeronautics Act established the Civil Aeronautics Authority with the power to regulate airline routes and fares. In June the Congress passed and the president signed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that established a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour, a forty hour week, and time-and-a-half for overtime, and banned most employment of children.

In the off-year elections of the Roosevelt second term the president's party suffered its first losses since 1928. In the Senate elections the Democrats lost 6 seats to the Republicans. In the House elections the Democrats lost 72 seats, the Republicans gained 81 seats, and the Progressive Party lost 6 seats. In the 76th Congress the Democrats maintained a commanding 68-23 majority in the Senate and a substantial 262-169 majority in the House.

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

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

UAH monthly satellite record
UAH satellite temperature record on global temperatures

Archived News Releases for Employment Situation
Monthly BLS Employment Situation Summaries

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

US Money Supply Historical Series
money supply from 1867 to 1970; Historical Statistics of US: X. Financial Markets and Institutions: Series X-415; p.992 (pdf)

Historical US Federal Spending
Table No. HS--47. Federal Government -- Receipts and Outlays: 1900 to 2003 (xls).

US Consumer Price Index time series
Consumer Price Index from 1800 to 1970; Historical Statistics: E. Prices and Price Indexes: Series E-135; p.211 (pdf)

US Unemployment
Historical US Unemployment from 1900; Statistics and Analysis on Unemployment, Poverty, Urbanization, etc., in the United States

Money Supply and CPI in Great Depression
includes annual employment rate in 1930s

Employment Situation Summary

Compensation from before World War I through the Great Depression

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

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

Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America