American Decades
The New Deal and its Critics
An Evolutionary Force.
The New Deal was one of the most powerful economic forces of the twentieth century, incubating economic philosophies and techniques of financial management that dominated American business life from 1945 to 1980. It expressed a shift from infrastructure manufacturing to consumer production; it ushered in large-scale federal oversight of the economy; it forced the development of bureaucratic procedures in business administration; it revolutionized public finance; it pioneered a mixed economy; it erected the welfare state. A combination of businessmen, economists, politicians, and labor leaders managed these transformations, synthesizing often-disparate approaches to the economy. They were often opposed by other businessmen and politicians far more unified in their economic outlook. For all their criticism, however, they could not derail the New Deal. It represented an evolutionary step in modern capitalism...
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1930's Business and the Economy
