Historical myths and economic fallacies are stubborn. They are also easily repeated. Perhaps one of the most stubborn myths—and other myths related to it—is that Roosevelt’s New Deal policies brought about economic recovery from the Great Depression. (Other related myths would be that the Great Depression was caused by unbridled capitalism, Hoover’s economic non-interventionism, and that WWII pulled America out of the Great Depression because big government war spending stimulated the economy and solved unemployment). Quite amazingly, even people who admit that they don’t remember much of what they learned in school are often able to repeat historical myths and fallacies verbatim.

Every once in a while, though, when a myth is confronted with key facts to the contrary, people often engage in fallacy-hopping—jumping from one fallacy to another when one no longer works in a particular instance. When someone does not passively accept the statement that FDR’s New Deal brought about economic recovery, but instead demonstrates anti-recovery, those ideologically committed to the myth will often hop to the next argument: FDR’s New Deal gave people “hope.”

A more recent example is by Stephen Moore, written in the introduction of New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy has Damaged America (2008), deals with the “hope” argument well,

The greatest and most enduring economic myth of the twentieth century is the idea that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal pulled America out of the Great Depression…. The most damning indictment of FDR’s New Deal agenda is that it did not do what it set out to do: end the Great Depression. Ask anyone over eighty, and he or she will probably say that FDR cared about the working man and gave the country hope. Maybe so, but that is not a sound economic plan…. Empathy is all well and good, but it does not create jobs or businesses or wealth…. The top tax rate under Roosevelt soared to almost 80 percent and then 90 percent, thus smothering any possibility of recovery…. Even the programs that are said to be the glittering examples of public policy success don’t shine so brightly any longer. Social Security was built on a Ponzi scheme where future generations would pay for the costs of the expansive benefits paid to earlier ones. “Pay as you go” worked like a dream when there were forty workers per retired person, but now looks like an Enron accounting fraud to today’s young workers—every two of whom will eventually subsidize every one retiree…. The irony of the New Deal is that this agenda, based on good intentions to help the poor and unemployed, caused more human suffering and deprivation in America than any other set of ideas in the twentieth century. (pp. xii-xvi, emphasis added)