The New Deal

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This essay will discuss the extent to which the New Deal strengthened the USA’s capitalism. The New Deal introduced reforms to the capitalist system and they got rid of the fetchers that were abused in the 1920’s. The New Deal reformed the system to protect workers from abuse from the owners of the factories and how the US government took more responsibility for the welfare of its citizens.
In the 1920s the USA had become a mixture of dramatic, social and political change. At this time the cities become larger and there were more people in the cities than in the rural areas. The US economy had more than doubled in strength between 1920 and 1929, this growth in wealth pushed America into the unfamiliar territory of the consumer society. Since Americans had extra money, they spent a lot of it on consumer goods like ready-to-wear cloths, home appliances and cars. However this wealth was only experienced by 40% of the whole population of America. It’s estimated that 60% of all American families lived below the bread-line. Despite this many Americans started to gamble their money in the American stock market. They saw the buying and selling of stocks would be an easy way to make money and because of this, many people bought stocks on the margin’. Buying stock ‘on the margin’ meant that the person couldn’t afford the stocks at full price, the broker could sell the stock to the person at a fraction of the price and the person could pay the broker back with interest at a later stage. The problem with this is that if the selling of the stocks didn’t make a profit, then the person would be in a lot of debt and this happened to many people that where living under the bread-line. Unfortunately despite this many Americans saw the stock mar...

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...oard to oversee the elections of unions and they stopped business owners from mistreating their workers. FDR also passed the Social Security Act of 1935 which promised pensions to many Americans, also created a system that insured the unemployed and promised that the government would take care of dependent children and the disabled people.
The conservative side of the Supreme Court had disagreed with many of the acts passed by the New Deal. This set the New Deal back a few steps but to fight this FDR set a plan in motion to add more liberal judges to the Court to overrule the conservative side of the Court. This plan worked in getting the conservative side of the Court to uphold the New Deal but it also gave his opponents in Congress ammunition to use against him. This gave rise to increasing distaste with the New Deal and this made it hard to pass any new acts.

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