The New Deal
Why This Argument Keeps Coming Back Part VI of “Why the New Deal Still Matters” Every generation believes its problems are new. The technology changes. The vocabulary shifts. The faces in power rotate. But the underlying argument—about markets, rules, and restraint—keeps resurfacing for the same reason: When the
The New Deal
Same Dynamics, New Technology Part V of “Why the New Deal Still Matters” History rarely repeats itself exactly. It adapts. The modern American economy does not look like the 1920s. We have more technology, more data, more global integration, and far more complex financial systems. But beneath those differences, the
The New Deal
How We Dismantled What Worked Part IV of “Why the New Deal Still Matters” By the late 1970s, the postwar economic model had been so successful that many Americans began to forget why it existed in the first place. For decades, growth had been steady. Financial crises were rare. A
The New Deal
Why the Middle-Class Boom Wasn’t an Accident Part III of “Why the New Deal Still Matters” Critics of the New Deal often argue that even if the reforms were well-intentioned, they didn’t actually work. The postwar boom, they say, was a coincidence—driven by technology, demographics, or America’
The New Deal
Why the New Deal Wasn’t About Bigger Government—but Better Markets Part II of “Why the New Deal Still Matters” By 1933, the argument over whether markets should be “left alone” was already settled—not by theory, but by reality. Banks were failing by the thousands. Credit had frozen.
The New Deal
Before the Fall: When Markets Lost Their Balance Part I of “Why the New Deal Still Matters” The 1920s are often remembered as a golden age of American capitalism—a time of innovation, prosperity, and confidence in the future. And in some ways, that reputation is deserved. Industrial output surged.