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Essay / The New Deal: effectiveness and impact on the United States
It was all the rage, this famous and infamous New Deal. Created by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it aimed to revive the economy and expand work, two goals that had diminished during the economic depression that hit the United States in the late 1920s and thirty. This revolutionary approach to economic recovery garnered almost unanimous support for Roosevelt, winning him four terms in office before his sudden death in 1945. However, in the 21st century, historians have begun to question whether the New Deal was also effective than we once thought. be. Although the New Deal created effective programs that remain active to this day, many of its policies were intended to harm the very people it promised to benefit. Ordinary American workers, especially those from minority groups, were wronged by the Roosevelt administration and its respective agencies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay The New Deal provided minimal financial benefit to Americans, despite promising it to them. A 2003 article from the CATO Institute blamed the program's infrastructure: because it was funded by increased federal taxes (primarily excise taxes on everyday items), any benefits citizens gained through to the New Deal were immediately taken over by the government. In addition, citizens received practically no benefits. Policies enacted by the New Deal discouraged employment and economic growth – for example, the National Industrial Recovery Act pressured businesses to reduce operations by raising workers' wages, while the National Industrial Recovery Act agricultural adjustment left many farmers jobless (Powell). While Americans were promised relief and recovery, they soon found themselves in a paradoxical cycle in which they were exploited in exchange for aid, ultimately achieving little net progress. When not exploited, they were plunged further into economic depression with ill-considered policies whose execution completely failed. Critics of the New Deal, such as populist politician Huey P. Long, believed that it only widened the already wide gap between rich and poor ("Critics"). The Great Depression had little effect on the wealthy; they had reached a level of wealth in the Roaring Twenties that made them almost invincible to economic change. Meanwhile, the less financially stable have been rendered powerless by the economic crisis. However, the New Deal made the situation worse. The program's tax infrastructure made the poor poorer, while the rich remained stagnant in their wealth. In addition to the classism that plagued the New Deal, the program was a continuation of the already dominant discriminatory attitude toward minority groups. A particularly affected group was black people. Roosevelt's administration encouraged, and sometimes enforced, segregation between blacks and whites. For example, the Federal Housing Administration operated under the mistaken belief that African Americans posed a threat to property values; as such, the FHA discouraged whites from lending on housing in predominantly black neighborhoods. The government also forced blacks migrating to the North and West to live in lower-quality residences, grouped in neighborhoods separate from whites (Lane). There was no evidence that the very existence of minority groups would harm the economic well-being of the nation, yet the administration,.