1939 Economy Revives
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President: Roosevelt (D); Senate: Barkley (D-KY); House: Bankhead (D-AL).
Meanwhile, after the Republican surge of 1938 it was time for payback, and Congress passed the Hatch Act which forbade federal employees from engaging in political activities. The bill was sponsored by Senator Carl Hatch (D-NM) after disclosures about employees of the Works Progress Administration using their positions to win Democratic votes.
With isolationism a political factor Congress passed a Neutrality Act requiring all belligerents in the World War to pay cash for munitions (i.e., "cash and carry"). In practice this policy favored Britain and France since they had control of the oceans.
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
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
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
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