6 ms·
> The New Deal delayed the recovery from the Depression to 10 years or so. This is categorically wrong: the WW2 GDP boom started in 1939, by which point we'd a
by yuliyp 1y ago
> The New Deal delayed the recovery from the Depression to 10 years or so.
This is categorically wrong: the WW2 GDP boom started in 1939, by which point we'd already been out of the great depression (1936 was the first year that Real GDP was above the previous peak of 1929). Regardless, that point is only 6 years after the New Deal took effect, meaning a delay of 10 years would require reversing the flow of time.
Source: https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=GDPCA https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=GDPCA (I can't figure out how to hotlink to a specific time range so you'll have to plug it in yourself).
- WalterBright 1y agoFriedman has a different take on this from "Monetary History of the United States". There was a severe contraction in 1937-38. 1939 saw a huge influx of gold from foreign arms purchases, which finally took the country out of the Depression. See the chart on page 530. 1936 was a false dawn. "It is a measure of the severity of the preceding contraction that, despite such sharp rises, money income was 17 per cent lower in 1937 than at the preceding peak eight years earlier and real income was only 3 per cent higher. Since population had grown nearly 6 per cent in the interim, per capita output was actually lower at the cyclical peak in 1937 than at the preceding cyclical peak. There are only two earlier examples in the recorded annual figures, 1895 and 1910, when per capita output was less than it was at the preceding cyclical peaks in 1892 and 1907, respectively. Furthermore, the contraction that followed the 1937 peak, though not especially long, was unusually deep and proceeded at an extremely rapid rate, the only occasion in our record when one deep depression followed immediately on the heels of another." pg 493