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The New Deal: Did It Serve Its Purpose?

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The New Deal: Did It Serve Its Purpose?
WAS THE NEW DEAL A SUCCES OR A FAILURE?!

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FDR introduced the New Deal to help the people that were affected by the depression of 1929. By this time, America would fall into a serious economic crash.!

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The main aims of the New Deal were relief for the homeless and unemployed, recovery for industry and reform to prevent the depression from happening again. Or at least, that was the theory.!

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To begin with, FDR’s purpose was to create employment, and many think he did; but they are wrong. The depression began in 1929 and by that time, the New Deal was created. There was more or less a 15% unemployment by year 1929, and at year 1933 it had increased by a 10%, but people forgot about this when he magically made it decrease to a 1.9% by year 1945.!
Only that magic works for people who pull rabbits out of their fancy hats, but certainly not for politicians- he didn’t do anything; war did the dirty job while he got the merits for it.! !

Furthermore, he released the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA), which dealt with the recovery of agriculture by encouraging farmers to grow less crops and kill off some of their cattle so that the prices of these products would rise and the farmers could make more money. Sounds great if we omit the fact that it lead to the destruction of millions of acres of crops and millions of farm animals, while Americans were hungry. New Deal agricultural policies provided subsidies based on a farmer’s acreage and output, which means they mainly helped big farmers. The New Deal displaced poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers, a large number of whom were black. This leads to the next point: since the National Recovery Administration not only offered whites the first crack jobs but also authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks, and 40% of all black workers made their living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the Agriculture
Adjustment Act acreage reduction hit blacks hard. The policies of this act forced more than 100,000 blacks off the land in 1933 and 1934.!
All this mess was caused before the AAA was declared unconstitutional in 1936. If anyone sees the success here, please enlighten me.!

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In conclusion, the New Deal was closer to being a failure than a success. I do not doubt that FDR’s intentions were good nor that he wanted the best for the Nation. But I firmly claim that he did not succeed. Despite of that, I admire his effort and willingness. In fact, in my opinion he did a good job. If it’s already hard to save yourself, imagine how it must be to save a country.!

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