It is not entirely garbage. The increase in spending decreased the unemployment rate by a few percentage points while people were working markedly less hours. The nation limped along. Anyway, debating the meaning of a hyperbolic statement made in a newspaper article is not something I am interested in.
I meant nondurable goods. Textiles, as with other nondurable goods, were also price fixed during the New Deal. Also, as I said in my previous post, the price fixing continued until 1939...which was more than two years.
Actually, unemployment was not higher before wage inflation. One of Hoover's misguided attempts at curbing the downturn was to artificially inflate wages. It was a new tactic used in conjunction with Smoot-Hawley to combat the downturn. As we can see from the massive increases in unemployment during Hoover's term, it had disastrous effects. Real hourly wages increased greatly in 1930 and 1931 when unemployment was increasing at its fastest rates. Companies finally ceased this foolishness in 1932 which is when the unemployment slowed and stabilized. FDR, for whatever reason, thought it was a good idea to reinstate this practice in conjunction with the aforementioned cartels.
You are missing their point. They are not arguing that those policies caused the Depression. They are arguing that the policies slowed the recovery. Even if unemployment decreased, which it did, it decreased at a slower rate than what it should have. The study effectively demonstrates this. Anyway, I am finished debating this. It will only result in an increasingly silly back and forth.
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