Interesting stuff. It does seem to turn out that Hoover pushed less for balanced budgets than I thought, although there are lots of statements attributed to him around 1932 trying to balance the budget, the tax hikes, etc.
But I thought the difference was more clear-cut than that as far as their actions.
Still, I find it hard to justify the statement that "they had the same view in regards to counter-cyclical spending and balanced budgets" -- FDR championed crazy deficits to stimulate the economy for a decade, Hoover seems to have been trying to move towards a balanced budget after a brief round of stimulus.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#1932_campaign), there are statements attributed to FDR accusing Hoover of reckless spending and criticizing him for spending too much and putting too many people on the dole. There are a lot of statements attributed to Bush about humble foreign policy, limited government and deregulation, and statements attributed to Obama about how forcing people to buy insurance is a bad thing.
In general, I assume that a politicians views agree with what he does rather than the lies he tells to get elected.
Hoover signed into law drastic tax increases, e.g. Revenue Act of 1932.
He did attempt some spending programs near the end of his presidency which was also at a point where the depression was already around the point of its most extreme GDP contraction.
You could argue that was FDR did in terms of spending and bank reforms was similar to what Hoover started near the end of his presidency but orders of magnitude larger. In contrast debt/GDP actually remained neutral during the New Deal due to concurrent GDP expansion.
Comments
Hoover increased spending by 50%, from $3.1B to $4.6B. FDR called him a Socialist.
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/erp/page/3796/1208...
As one of FDR's brain trust stated, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldengate/sfeature/sf_30s.html
Interesting stuff. It does seem to turn out that Hoover pushed less for balanced budgets than I thought, although there are lots of statements attributed to him around 1932 trying to balance the budget, the tax hikes, etc.
But I thought the difference was more clear-cut than that as far as their actions.
Still, I find it hard to justify the statement that "they had the same view in regards to counter-cyclical spending and balanced budgets" -- FDR championed crazy deficits to stimulate the economy for a decade, Hoover seems to have been trying to move towards a balanced budget after a brief round of stimulus.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#1932_campaign), there are statements attributed to FDR accusing Hoover of reckless spending and criticizing him for spending too much and putting too many people on the dole. There are a lot of statements attributed to Bush about humble foreign policy, limited government and deregulation, and statements attributed to Obama about how forcing people to buy insurance is a bad thing.
In general, I assume that a politicians views agree with what he does rather than the lies he tells to get elected.
All fair points
Hoover signed into law drastic tax increases, e.g. Revenue Act of 1932.
He did attempt some spending programs near the end of his presidency which was also at a point where the depression was already around the point of its most extreme GDP contraction.
You could argue that was FDR did in terms of spending and bank reforms was similar to what Hoover started near the end of his presidency but orders of magnitude larger. In contrast debt/GDP actually remained neutral during the New Deal due to concurrent GDP expansion.