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Why was President Roosevelt's plan called a "new deal" for Americans?
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" was named to signify a new social and economic relationship between the U.S. government and its citizens, similar to Theodore Roosevelt's "Square Deal." It aimed to transform the economic system to ensure fairness and security for ordinary Americans during the Great Depression. The New Deal introduced Social Security, jobs programs, and economic regulations, establishing a precedent for federal involvement in social welfare to prevent future economic crises.
The "New Deal," Franklin Delano Roosevelt's program in response to the crisis of the Great Depression, was named to remind people of Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 "Square Deal." Both programs envisioned not simply working within the existing economic system, but changing the system itself to give ordinary people a better chance at prosperity. FDR wanted to fundamentally alter the economy to maker it safer and fairer for average people. He was largely successful at this, implementing laws and programs that ensured that the federal government had a direct role in helping to better the lives of its citizens. He introduced Social Security, a program that ensured that people who had worked all their lives could have an income in their old age. Other initiatives were jobs programs, minimum wage, federally insured bank deposits, and many other innovations that substantially improved the lives of average Americans. For the first time, the federal...
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government acquired a substantial role in the social welfare of its citizens. As a backdrop to the New Deal, communism had triumphed in Russia fewer than twenty years before (1917) and the Communist Party grew in strength in the U.S. as a result of the economic collapse. Many in the elite were willing to compromise with workers at this time to avert a communist revolution in this country.
The "New Deal" was called that because it set up a new relationship between the American people and their government. Before the New Deal, Americans did not really expect their government to do much to help them economically. The New Deal changed this. It set up a system in which people could expect the government to help them when they were in economic difficulties. Under this "new deal" the government would regulate the economy to try to prevent things like the Depression from happening. In addition, it would help people when they did end up struggling economically. This represented a new understanding of the relationship between people and the government.