Herbert Hoover vs. George W. Bush

Throughout history, we see multiple occasions that are similar in nature; almost as if the events of the past reoccur in the future. Karl Heinrich Marx, a German philosopher, economist, and socialist, once said, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Now there may be instances in time where this seems true, Marx generally picks on future reoccurrences to be superficially comical or pretense. In this sense, Marx’s theory seems ambiguous when comparing when comparing two historical episodes where interventionist policies turned business cycle corrections into depressions. The first episode occurred in the Great Depression during the Hoover administration. Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States of America, took office less than eight months before the infamous Wall Street (Stock Market) Crash of 1929, which led the economy into what we know as the Great Depression. Hoover made attempts at containing the economic failure with volunteer efforts, public works projects, and much more; none of which provided economic relief during the time. The second episode is the somewhat current economic crisis, which has begun during the George W. Bush administration and carried over to the Barack Obama administration. George W. Bust, the 41st president of the United States of America, faced issues during his second term when America entered its longest post World War II recession. Bush enacted numerous economic programs in order to preserve our nation’s financial systems. In this context, Presidents Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush were forced to combat with a negative economy. It is certain that the presidencies of both the United States’ 31st president, Herbert Hoover, and 41st president, George W. Bush, are...

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...nturn follows the conservative logic employed by Herbert Hoover.

Works Cited

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Hoover, Herbert. 2000. “Inaugural Address.” In James M. McPherson, ed., To the Best of My Ability: The American Presidents. New York: DK Publishing Incorporated.

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Lebergott, Stanley. 1964. Manpower in Economic Growth: The American Record Since 1800. New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company.

Saez, Emmanuel and Thomas Piketty. 2003. “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998.” Quar- terly Journal of Economics, 118 (1): 1–39.