The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History Mises Institute

Boom-busts were a feature of markets. Under consumption caused the depression. WWII ended the Great Depression. All three Keynesian beliefs were inaccurate. Only the Austrian Business Cycle Theory got it right.

From 1950 to 1980, Americans were indeed Losing Ground. Charles Murray’s book on social policy debunks welfare programs. The programs are the problem. It is not possible to design a wealth transfer program that will not produce net harm.

The doctrine was separate but equal according to the Constitution. Segregation was not unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education consolidated several cases about separation, and stated that if schools were separate they were, ipso facto, not equal.

The Marshall Plan didn’t help get Europe back on its feet: free markets did. The Plan was another failed giveaway program. The Plan’s disastrous legacy was the wrongheaded approach it inspired in foreign aid programs for the rest of the century. 

While many Americans were hungry and destitute, FDR ordered the slaughter of six million pigs and the destruction of ten million acres of cotton. Public-sector jobs created by the New Deal displaced or destroyed private-sector jobs. World War II didn’t end the Great Depression; a return to free-market activity after the war did.

In the 1920s Presidents Harding and Coolidge never got close to the poll favorites of Washington, Lincoln and FDR when ranked, because they killed fewer, taxed less, made their administrations almost invisible, and sought no wealth or glory.