So far we’ve covered a wide host of nationalization efforts brought about by the New Deal. But were you aware that the US Supreme Court actually overturned some of the New Deal Legislation’s as unconstitutional?
The system of federal checks and balances established by the US Constitution were put in place specifically to prevent any one branch from gaining too much power. The FDR administration’s sweeping nationalization and socialization of the US economy was far too despotic for a legal framework that was built to be anti-fragile. Certainly, many of the tenets of liberty have eroded under the layers of bureaucracy and partisan hackery we find ourselves with, but the anti-fragility of the system at least hindered this progression.
FDR never got the full breadth of what he hoped to accomplish under the New Deal, thanks to the limits of the Executive branch of US government at the time. His solution, to enact his despotism with greater rigor, was the Judicial Procedure Reform of 1937.
His proposal was to allow the President to appoint up to a maximum of six new judges, one for every member of the SC over the age of 70 years and 6 months. At the time, members of both the Democratic party and the Republican party opposed this “court packing plan”.
Ultimately, FDR was able to find favorable judicial review for the majority of his plans after the procedure reform failed in the Senate.
Prior to FDR, no president had ever sought re-election more than once (a precedent set by George Washington), and it was after his 3rd and 4th victory that congress ratified the 22nd Amendment, which limited the number of terms for a President to two.
I estimate after maybe 2-4 more posts on the New Deal I will be wrapping up this series. I think it’s important to cover the full ramifications of progressive policy making which have carried an impact well into the present day. Many of the ideas proposed or implemented by the FDR administration are still favorable, and with growing wealth inequality thanks to the socialization of the monetary system, one can only imagine what effects more of the poison will have on the well being of future generations.
Deficit spending is no longer a partisan issue, but accepted policy making across the political spectrum. It is no longer a matter of reasonable fiscal policy versus outlandish socialization of the means of production. Make no mistake, both sides of the political aisle are endeavored to spend their way to victory. The incentives of politics ensure that provisions for special interests are the keys to the kingdom under an expansionary monetary policy where deficit spending can continue unabated.
There is no doubt in my mind that the social monetarism of global fiat reserve central banking is the single most potent accelerant in our path to serfdom.
Only by carefully studying our history, understanding economics from first principles, and finding that sly round about method talked about by F. A. Hayek, do we have any hope for the future.
Book of the Month:
The Ethics of Money Production by Jorg Guido Huulsman
“The overall tendency of money production is to increase prices beyond the level they would otherwise have reached. This implies in turn that the purchasing power of any unit of money diminishes”
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