The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.

Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.

With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.

Herbert Hoover did what Barack Obama is proposing to do. Hoover raised taxes on high-income people and put restrictions on international trade, in order to try to save American jobs. It didn't work then and it is not likely to work now. ~ Thomas Sowell  "Jolting" the Economy

Our soon to be president, Obama, has a lengthy website vaguely describing all that he intends for us.  As Mr. Sowell points out, much of it resembles things tried in the past... policies and actions that not only lengthened a recession but made it much, much worse... turning it into The Great Depression.

Why is it that so many people think taxing the bejeezus out of 'wealthy' people and punishing people with tarriffs and other trade barriors is the way to cure all the ills of the world?  Why do normal people, people who would not for a moment tolerate micro-management in the workplace by distant bosses seem to long so lovingly for micro-management by distant politicians?

Free markets and limited government... basically leaving people alone and keeping your hands off their stuff... has resulted in the greatest uplift in the standard of living the world has ever experienced.  Every national government that allows some version of free markets and limits it's own powers experiences the same thing; an increase in the overall standard of living within its borders.  Those that do not tolerate economic or political freedom (freedom from centralized planning)... the people in those nations suffer almost beyond our imagination.

Once upon a time, abject soul grinding poverty was the norm, for goodness sake. It was normal.  Today, only a couple of generations later, that sort of thing is a novelty... an abnormality... in industrialized nations.  We think people who rent apartments and have only one car and no cellphone are poor.

You know, by the measurements taken by those whose job it is to measure the 'economy'... we're not in a recession.  They're saying our economic output is down by less than 1/2%.  In the words of Keanu Reeves, "Whoa".

0.5% decrease.  Does that sound like a crisis?

When it comes to the Federal government, I'm a cynic.  After all, it is a demonstratable truism that there is no problem the federal government cannot make worse.  One merely need to read any history book about any government, really, to see how true that is.

So, repeating Mr. Sowells question... if Hoovers and FDR's schemes didn't work then... why will they work now?