The impact of the New Deal was immense and has lasted to this day. It fundamentally changed the relationship between the federal government and the US population. It did so by asserting that a primary role of the federal government is safeguarding the well-being of the American citizen through legislation and programs that offer the average person a measure of security. As Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt insisted, the average citizen should have the security the rich do to know that their lives will not be destroyed (though they may still be disrupted) due to unforeseen circumstances, such as stock market crashes.

Lasting effects of the New Deal include Social Security, a program that workers and employers pay into so they can retire when they reach old age. This is a popular program with very broad support. Other changes from the New Deal that have become embedded in our social fabric include the forty-hour work week, minimum wage, the end of child labor, federally insured bank deposits, and thirty-year, federally insured home mortgages. All of these are meant to provide a measure of security to average people.

Few people would like to go back to a world without a social welfare state that provides a minimum amount of safety and security to the average person.

The New Deal had many effects on our country. The immediate effect was to try to provide relief and jobs to our people. There were many programs that created jobs. The Civil Works Administration and the Public Works Administration are some examples of programs that were created. Farmers were encouraged to cut production by being paid not to plant crops as a result of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The Home Owners Loan Corporation allowed people with jobs to refinance their mortgage.

There were some reforms made to try to prevent the Great Depression from happening again. The Securities Act regulated the stock market. The Glass-Steagall Act regulated the banking industry and provided insurance for bank accounts. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures savings accounts.

The New Deal had some long-term effects. Today, people expect the government to be a safety net if things completely collapse. The government can no longer sit back and tell people to wait until good times return. They also expect the government to get involved and try to resolve disputes between powerful groups. The New Deal also created a lasting social program with the Social Security Act. People rely on Social Security when they consider retiring from their jobs.

The New Deal was very important in helping us deal with the effects of the Great Depression. It also has some lasting effects that are important to this day.

Coming to office amid the depths of the Great Depression, the newly-elected administration of President Franklin Roosevelt wasted no time devising a strategy for lifting the country out of the economic mire in which it was seemingly trapped.  The series of programs that emerged to address the wide-scale unemployment that followed the crash of the stock markets in 1929 were known as the New Deal.  The New Deal included a number of large-scale public works projects, many under the rubric of the newly-established Tennessee Valley Authority, that put large numbers of unemployed laborers to work building dams, roads, and other forms of infrastructure.  The Civil Works Administration was the federal agency established for the purpose of finding ways to put people back to work, and the Federal Housing Administration was established for the purpose of spurring the labor-intensive home-building industry which would benefit both laborers and those hoping to buy new homes through the program's low-interest loan element.  Other programs, including the establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which guaranteed the savings of individual investors up to a certain limit, and which still exists, was intended to protect families from the devastating effects of another wide-scale banking failure, which had wiped out millions of peoples' savings accounts, were similarly created to address the problems associated with the Great Depression.

The New Deal was instrumental in spurring economic growth and helping to lift the country out of the depths of the depression.  Its massive injection of the federal government into the economy was controversial then, and remains controversial today, although most historians agree that the New Deal was an appropriate response to the economic crisis that had come close to destroying the country.

We can look at both short-term and long-term effects of the New Deal.

In the short term, the New Deal helped to reduce the severity of the Great Depression.  It gave money to the poor and made jobs for many people.  It did not end the Depression, but it helped make things better than they had been.

The major long-term effect of the New Deal was to get the government involved in many more aspects of American life.  It helped allow the government to do things like providing pensions for retired people (Social Security) and guaranteeing bank deposits (FDIC).  These were things the government had never done before.

What were the effects of the New Deal on American political and economic life?

The true impact of the New Deal didn't fully take hold until after the end of World War II, but from the start, this new way of understanding the role of the federal government in people's lives led to greater stability, security, and prosperity for the bulk of the American people. The New Deal operated on the premise that the federal government had a central role in ensuring a better economic life for all Americans.

The New Deal worked at reviving the economy by putting people to work through various federal government programs to build and repair infrastructure. It increased the standard of living of the average person through minimum wage legislation, social security, and federally insured bank deposits and home mortgages.

Economically, the New Deal increased regulations on banks, Wall Street, and businesses in order to insure that another devastating stock market crash would not occur to bring down the economy a second time. These regulations worked until they were rolled back in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century, leading to the devastating collapse in 2008.

Politically, the New Deal was, in fact, truly a new deal for the American people. For the first time, the federal government took on the important role of trying to promote the security and prosperity of the American people. Before that time, aid programs had been the province of private charity and local government initiatives. The federal government felt its chief role was military defense of the nation. Under the New Deal, the federal government shifted its focus to institute sweeping programs to help all Americans. This helped keep the threat of communism at bay.

Politically, too, the New Deal was popular, and a public consensus that the government has an integral role in ensuring the economic welfare of all Americans has endured until this day, though the two major political parties debate how large that role should be.

What were the effects of the New Deal on American political and economic life?

The New Deal had significant impacts in both the short and the long term.

In the short term, it helped to reduce the severity of the Great Depression.  It did not end the Depression, but it improved conditions to some degree.  At the same time, it helped make Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party much more popular.

In the long term, the major impact of the New Deal was to entwine government and the economy.  This was the beginning of the system we have now in which the government is held responsible for how the economy runs and in which it regulates almost every aspect of the economy.