Who Has the Better Deal: Trump or FDR?

When FDR and his team moved into the White House in 1933, the country’s economy was in such bad shape that there were whole areas in the Unfired States which were threatened by famine.

Famine isn’t what we now call ‘food insecurity.’ Famine isn’t something which can be solved by just sending some foodstuff to a city or town where people walk into their local supermarket and find the shelves bare.

Famine is when an entire population is facing death from starvation, which happens in Third World countries like Malawi or Sudan.

Much of the country’s economy had been reduced to barter because not only were people without any money, but many of the local banks were closed. The unemployment rate was probably around 25% nationally, but in some towns, particularly towns which depended on output from a single factory, the number of unemployed matched the number of adults living in that town.

What FDR knew he had to do was get enough money into people’s hands so they could purchase the essential goods and services that they needed which would spur demand for products and this would get factories up and running again which would increase employment and get the economy back under control.

The good news was that the federal government could print all the money it wanted to print; the…