| February 16 |  |
Editor says, what if America had responded to the Great Depression the same way that we are dealing .. or rather NOT dealing .. with our own Great Recession now? Jackie Rose muses .. and this time, she sees no happy ending in sight. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the December 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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It is 1933, and the newly-elected President Franklin Roosevelt is planning to fight the Great Depression with the New Deal.
Unhappy Ending
FDR goes over the Fiscal CliffThe problem is .. not all of Congress is fighting on his side. The Democrats enthusiastically endorse his programs to get Americans working again, even at the taxpayers' expense ... while most Republicans refuse to let the taxes be raised.
With chances for a recovery dimming every day, many Americans turn, in their desperation, to extremist programs imported from abroad. The American Nazi "brown shirts" and American Communist "red shirts" are soon fighting in the streets, both sure that they are America's only hope.
In addition to the New Deal, the newspapers soon coin another phrase .. the Fiscal Cliff. And everyone knows that the country is rapidly falling to the bottom. An installment from the Happy Endings thread.
Entry posted by
Jackie Rose
© Jackie Rose, 2011-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Happy Endings Source: Wikipedia Labels: Fiscal Cliff, Franklin Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Finance, Depression.
~ In 1933, Republicans were mostly lying low, as their party was widely blamed (fairly or not) for the Crash of '29 and the Depression which followed. As for taxes, FDR's New Deal was originally funded via deficit spending, and later, when he allowed himself to be persuaded to reduce the deficit, Roosevelt did it by curtailing some New Deal programs. (Not that he had a choice, since the Seventy-fifth Congress, elected in 1936, was packed with conservative Republicans and right-wing Southern Democrats who dedicated themselves to attacking the New Deal.)
~ Ironically, FDR wasn't the deficit spender most Keynesians would have wanted him to be. If he had been forced to print money by the billion and even dump it out of airplanes (as some economists suggested) -- the economy would have recovered far faster. Remember, the severity of the Great Depression was caused by a collapse of demand. If 1934 had been met by a flood of new consumer demand, the depression would have ended by the election of '36. As it happened, it was worse. Yes, Bundists and Commies would have battled in the streets, but they were still tiny minority cults, rightly perceived by the general public as foreign agents. Remember, a vote for Republicans or Southern Democrats is a vote for stability, not a vote for revolution.
~ I think that any paramilitaries we had here in the US would not appeal well by openly modeling themselves on foreign models.
~ But Eric O, I am talking about a country in such utter chaos that the extremists would have been glad to model themselves on successful foreign models.
~ Thank goodness politics then wasn't like politics now. Things changed in the '90s.
~ That was sort of the point, Jeff. I have also heard it said that things got much more extreme with primaries, when the True Believers turned out to nominate their favorites, rather than simply focusing on the candidates who were most likely to succeed.
~ Jackie Rose -- Boy, you hit it on the head. Primaries may be "open," but in practice, they're a disaster. Only the rich can run for office.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
