Quote of the Day

“… We need to throw everything at the problem, including a payroll tax holiday, including creating jobs the way we did during the Depression. Because what is happening is really the assault on the middle class.” – Arianna Huffington

– She’s right about the creating jobs part, but it will never happen. Too bad, with our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure crumbling. Such a program would be too “socialist/communist/fascist” to pass Congress – while, 75 years later, we’re still using libraries, municipal buildings, schools, etc. that were built by tens of thousands of people employed by the WPA.

To quote TIME magazine:
Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA built or improved enough roads to girdle the globe 24 times, enough bridges to connect New Orleans with Havana, plus 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks and 853 airports. The WPA companion agency, the Public Works Administration, gave posterity Hoover Dam, Chicago’s sewer system and the aircraft carriers Yorktown and Enterprise. In all, the two agencies disbursed $9.8 billion.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910233,00.html#ixzz0qK1dal4e

I’m old enough to have been told by relatives & neighbors who lived through the Depression how New Deal programs gave them jobs & put food on their tables when there were NO other jobs.
I walked to school on roads that they helped build, alongside stone walls that they laid to lessen creeks’ flooding damage. The elementary school I went to had been rebuilt & “modernized” by New Deal workers.
Those programs did very much to lessen the impact, when you consider that doing nothing would have caused hundreds of thousands of people to starve (including children)!
You are right that WWII finally ended the Depression, but the New Deal allowed us to survive it.