Lots of politicians and rent-seeking lobbyists have been blathering away about how the US needs a new New Deal. Their position rests on the highly mistaken idea that the first New Deal was a success. That’s one of the pillars of statist miseducation in the US, to get people to believe that freedom is dangerous and we need government action to save us from the horrors of capitalism.

In this Detroit News article today, Burt and Anita Folsom show that the New Deal did not rescue the nation from the Depression, but made it worse.

Drawing resources into spending that makes politicians happy is not the way to put them to their best use.