<p>A strong centralized gov. was actually opposed by Jefferson. But yes, the rest of the founding fathers advocated a strong centralized government. But this was not a government designed for the purpose of entitlements, as the government evolved into an entitlement system under FDR, who was not a socialist, merely someone who tried to help us get out of the great depression. Though FDR helped our economy in the early 1930's with his spending spree and government growth, by the late 1930's the economy was headed for another recession. "By the beginning of the next decade the United States had gone from a laissez-faire economy that oversaw its own conduct to an economy regulated by the federal government. The debate over which is the best course of action still rages today."<a href="http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:GEO88ev-zJQJ:kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade30.html+American+economy+%2B+1930%27s&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us">http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:GEO88ev-zJQJ:kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade30.html+American+economy+%2B+1930%27s&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us</a></p>
<p>"The New Deal helped people to survive the depression, but acted as a painkiller rather than a cure for the nations economic ills. Unemployment was reduced, but remained high through the 1930s. Farm income rose from a low of $1.9 billion in 1932 to $4.2 billion in 1940. The demands of the depression led the United States to institute social-security programs and accept labor unions, measures that had been taken decades earlier in many European nations."</p>
<p><a href="http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761584403_2/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States.html%5B/url%5D">http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761584403_2/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States.html</a>
"Although economic conditions improved by the late 1930s, unemployment in 1939 was still about 15 percent. "
But the experience of the Great Depression left a lasting mark on the United States in the forms of a much greater role for the federal government, a new political alignment in which Democrats would retain the support of a majority for most of the next half century, and a general feeling that the free market must be regulated in order to avoid another such economic catastrophe."
<a href="http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761584403_2/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States.html%5B/url%5D">http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761584403_2/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States.html</a>
"The New Deal also created a lot of jobs--millions. And the New Deal did cause significant business activity. Industrial production--factory activity, basically--came back to 1929 levels around the time of Roosevelt's reelection. All of these outcomes are taken as evidence of public spending's success.</p>
<p>But what really stands out when you step back from the picture is not how much the public works achieved. It is how little. Notwithstanding the largest peacetime appropriation in the history of the world, the New Deal recovery remained incomplete. From 1934 on--the period when the spending ramped up--monetary troubles were subsiding and could no longer be blamed alone for the Depression. The story of the mid-1930s is the story of a heroic economy struggling to recuperate but failing to do so because lawmakers' preoccupation with public works rather got in the way of allowing productive businesses to expand and pull the rest forward.</p>
<p>What was wrong with those public works jobs? Many created enduring edifices: New York's Triborough Bridge, for example; the Mountain Theater of Mount Tamalpais State Park outside San Francisco; the Texas Post Office murals, which were funded by Henry Morgenthau's Treasury. But the public jobs did their work inefficiently. That was because the jobs were scripted to serve political ends, not economic ones.</p>
<p>One of the saddest accounts of the public works job culture I came across involved a model government farm in Casa Grande, Arizona. The men were poor--close to Grapes of Wrath poor--but sophisticated. They knew that the government wanted them to share jobs. But they saw that the only way for the farm to get profits was to increase output and to stop milking by hand. Five dairy crew men approached the manager to propose purchasing milking machines to increase output. They even documented their plea with a shorthand memo: "Milking machine would save two men's labor at five dollars per day. . . . Beginning in September would save three men's wages or $7.50 on account of new heifers coming in."</p>
<p>The men were willing to strike if they did not get the machines, though they feared they might lose their precious places on the farm if they did strike. Their fears proved justified. "You're fired," the workers later recalled the manager replying when he saw their careful plan. The government man was horrified at the idea of killing the jobs he was supposed to create. "You're jeopardizing a loan of the U.S. government, and it's my job to protect that loan. You're through, every one of you, get out."</p>
<p>A related problem was that the New Deal's emergency jobs were short term, lasting months, not years, so people could not settle into them. This led to further disruption. In the very best years of Roosevelt's first two terms, unemployment still stood above 9 percent. Nine percent is better than horrendous, but it is hardly a figure that induces hope.</p>
<p>One could interject that such arguments do not take into account the context--the paucity of other jobs, the dust storms, the deflations, the homelessness, the incomprehensible real privation of the period. But in the later part of the 1930s, the same model infrastructure projects did their part to prolong that privation. The private sector, desperate, was incredibly productive--those who did have a job worked hard, just as our grandparents told us. But the government was taking all the air in the room. Utilities are a prime example. In the 1920s electricity was a miracle industry. There was every expectation that growth in utilities might pull the country through hard times in the future.</p>
<p>And the industry might have indeed done that, if the government had not supplanted it. Roosevelt believed in public utilities, not private companies. He created his own highly ambitious infrastructure project--the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA commandeered the utility business in the South, notwithstanding the vehement protests of the private utilities that served that area.</p>
<p>Washington sucked up much of the available capital by selling bonds and collecting taxes to pay for the TVA or municipal power plants in towns. In order to justify their own claim that public utilities were necessary, New Dealers also undermined private utilities directly, through laws--not only the TVA law but also the infamous Public Utilities Holding Company Act, which legislated many companies out of existence. Other industries saw their work curtailed or preempted by government as well.</p>
<p>What about that oft-cited rising industrial production figure? The boom in industrial production of the 1930s did signal growth, but not necessarily growth of a higher quality than that, say, of a Soviet factory running three shifts. Another datum that we hear about less than industrial production was actually more important: net private investment, the number that captures how many capital goods companies were buying relative to what they already had. At many points during the New Deal, net private investment was not merely low, but negative. Companies were using more capital goods than they were investing in.</p>
<p>All this tells us that while some companies were gunning their engines for the moment--the industrial production--they had little hope for productivity gains in the years ahead. Business no longer believed in business. Five years into the New Deal, companies across the country were mounting what Roosevelt himself described as a "capital strike."</p>
<p>People became accustomed to a sort of calculus of frustration. The closer the country got to the prosperity of 1929, the more impossible reaching such prosperity seemed. The 1930s came to be known as the always recovering but never recovered decade. The Dow itself confirmed this pessimistic assessment by stubbornly remaining below 1929 levels through World War II and into the 1950s."</p>
<p>ttp://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:beKgWP3GDgkJ:<a href="http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.27368/pub_detail.asp+New+Deal+history%2B+negatives&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us%5B/url%5D">www.aei.org/publications/pubID.27368/pub_detail.asp+New+Deal+history%2B+negatives&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us</a></p>
<p>The Founding fathers would have been against this. Yes they believed in a strong central government, but only for the purpose of protecting liberties, I.e. maintaining an army.</p>
<p>The Articles of Confederation's major failure was its inability to put down Shay's rebellion. A Strong centralize government was needed, therefore, to bring stability to the Union; however, none of the founding fathers wanted to extend government beyond this. Taxes were only supposed to pay for military. The reason America fought for independence was taxes, the top economic 1/3 of the nation simply did not want to pay a variety of taxes to Britain. If they did want to pay extra taxes and expand the role of government, then they would predated Marx's vision and gone ahead with it. Instead, the founding fathers created a government whose primary function was to defend the people, "to provide for the common defense." Yes a national road was constructed and a postal system established, but, for the most part the founding fathers adhered to the principles of Locke on limited government. The founding fathers were Enlightenment thinkers who followed Enlightenment ideas, such as Locke's theory on limited gov. and Smith's theory on laissez faire capitalism. The founding fathers simply believed that freedom of the people was the most important aspect of a nation. If they believed otherwise, then they would have stated so in the Constitution.</p>
<p>The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;</p>
<p>To borrow money on the credit of the United States;</p>
<p>To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;</p>
<p>To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;</p>
<p>To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;</p>
<p>To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;</p>
<p>To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;</p>
<p>To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;</p>
<p>To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;</p>
<p>To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;</p>
<p>To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;</p>
<p>To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;</p>
<p>To provide and maintain a Navy;</p>
<p>To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;</p>
<p>To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;</p>
<p>To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;</p>
<p>To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And</p>
<p>To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.</p>
<p>Where does it state, that Congress has the power to make sure that everyone has healthcare, that everyone gets a free check from Washington, that everyone is entitled to food?</p>
<p>Please do not respond with a question, where does it prohibit this? I understand that the Constitution is a living document, but the founding fathers would never have approved of the current roles of government because, as I said earlier, they were Enlightenment thinkers who believed in Enlightenment ideals. They predated Karl Marx by almost 100 years, and thus, did not believe in his theories on equitable distribution of resources.</p>
