In response to the letter of Sept. 21, “Unregulated market creates economic prosperity,” this writer states: “President Calvin Coolidge produced an unprecedented level of prosperity in America with his deregulation policies and vetoes that prevented government intervention into the free market.”

I’ve heard this before by intelligent people. That doesn’t make sense to me. Coolidge was president from 1923-1929. The bottom dropped out of the stock market on “Black Friday,” October 24, 1929 when Hoover was barely elected president and had continued “laissez faire,” meaning an economy relatively free of government control or regulation. These presidents did not plan, nor did they attempt to regulate, banking, stocks, bonds, or other basic aspects of the economy.

For much of the 1920s, the U.S. seemed prosperous. People were employed, and consumer goods flowed out of factories faster than ever. The satisfaction of American workers was evidenced by the decline in membership and significance of labor unions. A number of Americans were gripped with speculative fever. They invested in unseen real estate, foreign currency, and even stocks in new companies that had yet to manufacture a good. When the stock market began to plummet, some confronted it with disbelief.

Wealth in the 1920s was not shared equally. Wealth distribution tilted strongly toward the rich getting richer, and that was an important factor contributing to economic instability and ultimately the Great Depression. This meant workers in general were unable to afford the very goods they were producing.

By the 1920s, uneven distribution of wealth in America was accelerating, and it posed dramatic consequences for the health of the nation’s economy. The Great Depression deeply affected the whole world and contributed to Hitler’s rise in power!

After WW II, the scale of government spending in the war finally wiped out the Great Depression. The New Deal spirit was evident in some wartime measures, such as the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission, which Roosevelt established to ensure the rights of black workers, and the “G.I. Bill of Rights” of 1944, conferring enormous educational benefits on returning veterans. These helped create the wealthiest and most powerful economy in the world!

Karen Jay

Ogden