New Deal Dbq

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On October 29, 1929, America fell into one of the worst economic catastrophes the country has ever seen. The Great Depression left destruction in its wake, leaving no one unaffected. The president at the time, Herbert Hoover, went with a hands off approach and tried to let the issue fix itself which was not favored by the public. They went from a hands off to hands out attitude towards the federal government. The voting citizens did not like the lack of help, so in the 1932 election the people voted in President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This democratic president stepped up to the plate stop the Great Depression with his set of programs called the New Deal, yet it didn't work out quite as planned. The New Deal’s purpose was to stop the Great Depression by lowering unemployment rates, but instead it prevented the rates from decreasing all the while causing America to reach an all time high in …show more content…

In response Roosevelt passed the National Industry Recovery Act that only made it harder to employ workers. According to the author of “How FDR’s New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People,” Jim Powell, “the National Industrial Recovery Act cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people” (Powell 2003). The New Deal had great intentions, but that is all it had. One of the groups that was affected the most was African Americans, they were the first to be mated off reaching 500,000 people freshly unemployed. Another way the New Deal prolonged unemployment was through taxes. Jim Powell goes on to state, “New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%” (Powell 2003). Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls also made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring all

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