end.”
“Collectively those millions of laid off workers and their families will buy food to keep farmers farming, and they’ll buy clothing to keep textile mills running. Let’s be honest with each other,” Rockefeller instructed. “A lack of money is not holding any one of us in this room back from expanding our enterprises. It is a complete lack of profit in doing so. No one is buying anything; therefore, we don’t make anything. Demand must be created from the bottom and ripple up through the economy.”
“This has certainly been a fun debate,” Hastelloy interrupted while opening his hands out wide and looking to his left palm. “On the one hand, we have the idea of giving money to the top as the titans of industry attempt to predict what the people will want to buy and build out their industrial capacity in kind. That of course assumes the funds handed out get spent at all and don’t just disappear into ever fattening bank accounts. Assuming that, more workers will get hired and the economy will grow happily ever after.”
Hastelloy shifted his gaze to his right hand. “On the other hand we have the bottom up approach of supporting the little guys so that they may buy things that they need to survive and thereby instruct the titans of industry what they want manufactured. The industrialists then build out to meet that demand, hire workers and again the economy grows on its merry way.”
“I personally see a dangerous parallel between the top down approach and communism’s central economic planning. In both cases a small, elite group tries to decide where money and economic capacity should be spent without much input from the fundamental laws of supply and demand.”
“Then again, what do I know? I’m just the nation’s top cop,” Hastelloy sighed. “My life revolves around facts, not theories. That being the case, the fact of the matter is we already tried Hoover’s top down solution and it failed in spectacular and disastrous fashion. It’s time for something new, a New Deal for America. A deal which grants relief to the unemployed and the poor, recovery to economic normalcy, and reform of the financial system to prevent this from ever happening again.”
“Who is proposing this New Deal?” Morgan asked.
“That is why the four of you are here now. Gentlemen, I would like you to meet Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Hastelloy announced and had his words rewarded with a distinguished individual in his early fifties enter the room. “President Hoover and his history of failed economics will represent the Republican ticket in the next election cycle. None of you can afford another four years like the last four. Mr. Roosevelt, with the backing of you four gentlemen, will represent the Democratic ticket and usher in his New Deal with America. All I ask as your host this evening is that you listen to him and his ideas. At that point you are free to make your own decision.”
Just over a year removed from the initial introductory meeting he facilitated between Mr. Roosevelt and his financial backers, Hastelloy stood in the crowd to watch the newly elected President Roosevelt take the oath of office.
As predicted, President Hoover was soundly trounced in the election. The deeply unpopular sitting president received only thirty-nine percent of the popular vote, and managed to carry only six states in the all-important Electoral College count.
Hoover was a fool who wasted America’s vast potential in a vain attempt to cling to some outdated political dogma of strict meritocracy. It was a simple message that played well to the crowds, ‘You get what you earn’. Once upon a time it was absolutely true, but the moment labor became specialized and economies grew into impossibly complex intermingled, interdependent systems, it all changed.
If one economic pillar such as spending from the lower classes of society, the big national banking
“Collectively those millions of laid off workers and their families will buy food to keep farmers farming, and they’ll buy clothing to keep textile mills running. Let’s be honest with each other,” Rockefeller instructed. “A lack of money is not holding any one of us in this room back from expanding our enterprises. It is a complete lack of profit in doing so. No one is buying anything; therefore, we don’t make anything. Demand must be created from the bottom and ripple up through the economy.”
“This has certainly been a fun debate,” Hastelloy interrupted while opening his hands out wide and looking to his left palm. “On the one hand, we have the idea of giving money to the top as the titans of industry attempt to predict what the people will want to buy and build out their industrial capacity in kind. That of course assumes the funds handed out get spent at all and don’t just disappear into ever fattening bank accounts. Assuming that, more workers will get hired and the economy will grow happily ever after.”
Hastelloy shifted his gaze to his right hand. “On the other hand we have the bottom up approach of supporting the little guys so that they may buy things that they need to survive and thereby instruct the titans of industry what they want manufactured. The industrialists then build out to meet that demand, hire workers and again the economy grows on its merry way.”
“I personally see a dangerous parallel between the top down approach and communism’s central economic planning. In both cases a small, elite group tries to decide where money and economic capacity should be spent without much input from the fundamental laws of supply and demand.”
“Then again, what do I know? I’m just the nation’s top cop,” Hastelloy sighed. “My life revolves around facts, not theories. That being the case, the fact of the matter is we already tried Hoover’s top down solution and it failed in spectacular and disastrous fashion. It’s time for something new, a New Deal for America. A deal which grants relief to the unemployed and the poor, recovery to economic normalcy, and reform of the financial system to prevent this from ever happening again.”
“Who is proposing this New Deal?” Morgan asked.
“That is why the four of you are here now. Gentlemen, I would like you to meet Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Hastelloy announced and had his words rewarded with a distinguished individual in his early fifties enter the room. “President Hoover and his history of failed economics will represent the Republican ticket in the next election cycle. None of you can afford another four years like the last four. Mr. Roosevelt, with the backing of you four gentlemen, will represent the Democratic ticket and usher in his New Deal with America. All I ask as your host this evening is that you listen to him and his ideas. At that point you are free to make your own decision.”
Just over a year removed from the initial introductory meeting he facilitated between Mr. Roosevelt and his financial backers, Hastelloy stood in the crowd to watch the newly elected President Roosevelt take the oath of office.
As predicted, President Hoover was soundly trounced in the election. The deeply unpopular sitting president received only thirty-nine percent of the popular vote, and managed to carry only six states in the all-important Electoral College count.
Hoover was a fool who wasted America’s vast potential in a vain attempt to cling to some outdated political dogma of strict meritocracy. It was a simple message that played well to the crowds, ‘You get what you earn’. Once upon a time it was absolutely true, but the moment labor became specialized and economies grew into impossibly complex intermingled, interdependent systems, it all changed.
If one economic pillar such as spending from the lower classes of society, the big national banking
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