Capitalism and United States Essay

There are many aspects of FDR’s New Deal that must be analyzed in order to determine if this collection of economic programs helped or hurt America’s effort in ending the Great Depression. The Great Depression caused both a decline in national moral and economic productivity unprecedented in United States history. The previously prestigious capitalistic economy was brought to its knees on Black Thursday in October of 1929. Roosevelt had taken office with the intent to quickly relieve a nation from Hoover’s â€Å"do-nothing approach† within his first 100 days as president. He knew he had to act fast in order to fulfill the demands of the people that could be, in part, credited because of their investments in the stock market with unstable funds. There was a rebellion in full swing. As recorded in A People’s History of the United States, â€Å"Desperate people were not waiting for the government to help them; they were helping themselves.†After the stock market crashed, the flaws in the capitalist system were more predominantly brought to surface. The system had been given a bad name among a growing socialist nation in times of desperation. To a socialist critic, the system could be depicted as unsound by nature; neglecting human needs in the pursuit of large corporate benefits. The New Deal was set in place to save capitalism from itself. In order to do this Roosevelt felt that passing a number of social programs would keep the market economy from, once again, self destructing. Through his efforts, Roosevelt had consequently formed class warfare. The faces of business leaders had become the faces of bloodthirsty, evil men which appealed largely to an American public looking for someone, something, or anything to blame for the pain they were going through. Finding that happy-medium between relieving the economic crisis of the American people and not giving the public something they could view as a government fall-back was something that the country had never had to deal with before on this large of a scale. Throughout Roosevelt’s implementation of his social programs concerns surfaced from conservative Americans. Roosevelt did not want welfare to be seen as â€Å"a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.† FDR’s New Deal, under a growingly socialist system, in ways got the country back on its feet and may have been the fix that America was looking for at the time. At the same time; however, it could have been the spark to the gradual lazy, entitled attitude that we experience today in the United States.