Sunday, January 22, 2017

Tony Wikrent — Rex Tugwell of FDR's Brain Trust: The New Deal in Retrospect

Rexford Guy Tugwell (1891-1979) was an economist and one of the most important and innovative members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Brain-Trust. Tugwell studied economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania under Simon Patten, at the time one of the leading economists in the USA and one of the last great economists to emphasize the difference between productive economic activity, and economic rent seeking. Patten was a founder of the American Economics Association. 
This was decades before Wharton was infested by neoliberalism and became an MBA mill.

This account by Tugwell provides an excellent short history of the pre-war Roosevelt administration. I greatly wish I had been aware of it nine years ago, in time to have posted it during Obama's first campaign. It would have served as a signpost to an alternative to neoliberalism, which Obama unfortunately followed steadily as he moved from one accommodation with Wall Street to the next. In addition to my reading of countless articles these past 8 years, I have read Obama’s two autobiographies, Plouffe’s book, and the biographies by Halperin and Heilemann, Remnick, and Alter, and the excellent book detailing the influence of Wall Street by Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. One thing that strikes me is that neither Obama, nor Plouffe, nor anyone else close to Obama, ever spoke of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal as if they were actually familiar with them or wished to emulate FDR. I suspect they have never studied Roosevelt and the New Deal, at least not with the goal of learning how to govern as well and as dynamically as FDR did. Obama and his team certainly never discussed the heroic measures Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins took to get millions of people a paying job so they wouldn’t starve in the winter of 1933-34....
Obama, like Bill Clinton, modeled himself on Ronald Reagan rather than FDR. Actually, it was Jimmie Carter that began the turn of the Democratic establishment to the right.

The post contains a copy of R. G. Tugwell's "The New Deal in Retrospect," The Western Political Quarterly, December, 1948, Vol. 1, No. 4.
It also contains a link to Michael Hudson's article on Simon Patten on productive investment versus economic rent.

7 comments:

Penguin pop said...

In turn, more and more positions that would have been thought as more moderate 40-50 years ago are now outright "socialism" to detractors. The Overton Window keeps going more and more to the right. There needs to be a new FDR in a few years to try to shift the conversation more to the left again.

Penguin pop said...

In other words, being more left-minded has to be cool and palatable again and a lot of this lies in good marketing and persuasion to change people's perceptions and consciousness.

Matt Franko said...

"emphasize the difference between productive economic activity, and economic rent seeking. "

Tom this is a slippery slope to tread on when we start to contrast "productive activity" vs. anything...

There are probably a lot of people out there who think "Gender Studies" is a non-productive activity and that those who are having positions in that field of study are rent extractors...

So I dont know about all of this talk of "productive activity" it has a kind of puritanical aroma to it in general...

Tom Hickey said...

Productive activity vs rent-seeking is based on monetary reward versus actual contribution.

It's a bit far-fetched to see people studying things like gender studies as rent-seekers when economic rent is extracted by exerting economic power.

Random said...

Tom please promote this to post. "Misfired" trident middle towards US!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38711418

lastgreek said...

[OK, if there ever was a posting that was off topic, it's this one -- especially when it overlaps an FDR thread. (Btw, if I remember correctly, didn't JMK have to do a lot of hand holding to get FDR to put forward significant progressive policies?)]

So ... anyone here thinking of purchasing a computer, smartphone or some other electronic device soon? If yes, you'd be wise to wait a few months until the new models come out. You see, bluetooth 5 is now a reality, and the changes from the previous generation -- speed, range and messaging capacity -- are too significant to ignore. If you don't care, at the very least make sure you're offered a good discount in price if offered a bluetooth 4 device. I personally think it's nuts dishing out a few thousand dollars on a bluetooth 4 computer when "5" is only a few months away.

Also, make sure your device has a USB Type-C port since this will soon be the new connector standard for all electronic devices big or small. It's already here in some late 2016 devises.

Another note: Avoid any computer device that does not come with at least 4gb of RAM or comes with an eMMC system drive. Unless it's gifted to you, just don't bother. During the holiday sales last month, I was tempted to purchase a 2gb RAM, 32gb eMMC, 10-inch laptop from the MS online store because the price was just too tempting at $279 Cdn ($179 in the US store!). I figured for email and surfing and some other small tasks it would be just fine. Well, the lagging was too annoying. And not only that -- eMMC cannot be upgraded; you're stuck with it. This is important to know because Windows 10 itself takes up a good portion of those 32 gb ... and any future major OS upgrades require around 10 gb of free space in your SYSTEM drive.

There, glad I got that off my hairy chest :)

Tom please promote this to post. "Misfired" trident middle towards US!!

Hope "middle" is not a typo :(

Jonathan Larson said...

Ah Rex Tugwell. A perfect reminder of just how good the New Deal economists were.

I think the real reason why guys like Tugwell get shoved down the memory hole is that he is such a giant compared to the lightweights who populate the dismal profession these days.

Thanks Tony for this post!