Costa and Steckel (1997, in Health and Welfare During Industrialization) present data on mean adult height and average life expectancy of US-born caucasian Americans between 1710 and 1970. Beginning around 1900, both statistics begin a strong secular trend with a slight inflection downward in the late ‘teens and early twenties, but otherwise without any dips which can be attributed to 1930’s or 1940’s era policies.

Secular trends in mortality rates also decline steadily from 1900 through the present, with an asymptotic slowdown in the last thirty years (Robert Fogel, 2004)

Certainly at local and regional levels there were patterns of malnutrition and even starvation during the Great Depression. But overall, there is no evidence that either the Depression or the New Deal had any lasting effect on the longer-term trend of increasing life expectancy, height, body-mass indicies, or average caloric intake which began in the early years of the 20th century as a result of industrialization and scientific advances in our knowledge of the connection between health and nutrition.

Excellent post, Kieran!

Do you know this or are you just pulling it out of your butt? Who has proved it? Raising the price of agricultural goods can increase malnutrition or reduce it, depending on where the money from the increased prices goes. If it represents a transfer from the rich to the poor, it can easily reduce malnutrition. Farmers were a quarter of the population in 1930, with more small town population who directly benefited from increased farm income. Poverty and malnutrition was concentrated in the rural population.

Not to mention FDRs various relief schemes which also represented income transfers to the poor.

But no doubt all the people you know who were poor kids in the 1930s have bitter memories of FDR for taking food from their mouths. Funny he was so popular with their parents.

You are right that he didn’t end the Depression, but that’s because he wasn’t socialist and Keynesian enough—refused to run a large enough government deficit. Took WWII, with its massive infusions of government capital and virtual state control of the economy, to end the depression for good.

Do I smell a variant of Lowtax’s Law here?

He does not pause to compare the popular culture and mores of the early 20th century, when capitalism really was relatively unfettered, to those of today.

Yeah, and that ties in perfectly with Brown’s claim that “Democracy and capitalism seem to have triumphed”… or something.

After all: if the government is always there to save you from the consequences of your irresponsible choices, why not behave irresponsibly?

Well, there are only two kinds of actions: (1) risky, (2) not risky. But wait! There are also only two kinds of actions: (1) responsible, (2) irresponsible. Clearly risky = irresponsible, not risky = responsible! Because Steve Burton the guru says so.

Furthermore, there are only two kinds of governments: (1) big (2) small. There are only two kinds of taxes: (1) high (2) low. There are only two ideologies: (1) Stalinism (2) libertarianism. There are only two religions: (1) Christianity (2) Islam. There are only two colours of hair: (1) white (2) black.

… though her definition of a “true conservative” would no doubt differ from that preferred by the aforesaid people on the left.

And that definition is…? Or maybe “conservative” is a nebulous concept which is very hard to pin down. Thus, as far as Brown is concerned, the same person can be a conservative when it’s convenient, and not a conservative when it’s convenient. Nice idea.

By the way, I think the Free World needs a program to ferret out any rants containing the words “The Left” with no qualification whatsoever, and brain these rants with the word “MORON”.

“If music be the food of love
then laughter is its queen
and likewise if behind is in front
then dirt in truth is clean….”

Now I like Procol Harum. I like Gary Brooker’s voice, piano playing and ear for melody, I thought Barry Wilson was in the top 6 drummers, Keith Reid’s words usually scanned, and “Still There’ll Be More” was a very grounded song about terror in 1969.
But I’ve never heard that so-called “last verse” of “Whiter Shade” (though it does match the metre of the verses I do know).
Is this batshit judge a collector of obscure alternate versions, or did the battalion of adjuncts who actually wrote her speech slip that verse in as a sort of challenge? Were any of the other references slipped in as challenges – “can we get her to say that Harding was touched by God? That Eleanor Roosevelt suckled demons?” ? Only asking.

Janice Rogers Brown would appear to have something along the same lines in mind when she complains that “there are so few true conservatives left in America” – though her definition of a “true conservative” would no doubt differ from that preferred by the aforesaid people on the left.

Is this “unhinged?”

Ms. Brown agrees with John McGinnis that “there is simply a mismatch between collectivism on any large and enduring scale and our evolved nature.” She also believes that there is an element in human nature that loves big government. Mr. Healy appears to believe that there is some sort of contradiction here. But compare: in the long run, a life addicted to opiates cannot be a happy or flourishing life. Yet there is an element in human nature that craves opiates.

Is this “unhinged?”

Ms. Brown cites Ayn Rand’s identification of “the collectivist impulse” with the “tribal view of man” – i.e., the view that the individual is and/or should be subordinate to the group. Mr. Healy reacts to this not especially shocking idea exactly the way that “objectivists” typically react to any mention of Kant, even when he’s saying something perfectly sensible.

He gets unhinged.

“Oh god,” he groans, and whips out what has to be the feeblest parody of this easily parodied author I’ve yet come across (I mean, really: “the cars keys shall be yours by sheer force of will?” What’s that about?)

Ms. Brown sees Roosevelt’s “New Deal” as a turning point in the growth of the modern American system of welfare for all: poor, middle-class and rich, employers and unemployed, business, academia, the arts…everyone and everything. To her, this looks like creeping socialism.

Is this “unhinged?”

Consider: since 1929, U.S. government spending as a percentage of GDP has gone from less than 10% to more than 30%. In nominal dollar terms, that’s a change from less than $100 to more than $12,000 per capita. $12,000 is about the same as leading members of the European Union. (For example, the U.S. government actually spends quite a bit more per capita on healthcare than France does). Meanwhile, the CBO projects that U.S. government spending on retirement and healthcare alone will in the foreseeable future more than double as a percentage of GDP.

Like many conservatives, Brown believes that all this fosters a culture of dependency and irresponsibility “which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.” After all: if the government is always there to save you from the consequences of your irresponsible choices, why not behave irresponsibly? Why not tolerate, or even encourage, irresponsible behavior in your children? Why not embrace irresponsibility as a creed? Why not treat responsibility as a vice, rather than a virtue? Why not, like Crooked Timber’s John Holbo, stigmatize responsible behavior as a “conformist crouch?”

Is this worry “unhinged?”

So Mr. Healy appear to think. He looks at the same massive expansion of the welfare state and sees only “the unfettered rise of market capitalism, with all the superficiality and commodified meaninglessness it brings.”

He does not pause to compare the popular culture and mores of the early 20th century, when capitalism really was relatively unfettered, to those of today.

That, after all, might raise questions about just exactly who is “unhinged.”

But enough. I don’t know whether meaningful communication is even possible here.

You gotta give her props though for her skill in employing the old hi/low culture rhetorical trick:

Sound familiar? Of course Procol Harum had an excuse. These were the 60’s after all, and the lyrics were probably drug induced. What’s our excuse?

One response might be that we are living in a world where words have lost their meaning. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. It seems to be an inevitable artifact of cultural disintegration. Thucydides lamented the great changes in language and life that succeeded the Pelopennesian War…

What’s next? Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “I like big butts” to be followed by some snippet of Sappho?

Never mind the fact that in the classics one can easily find a bevy of horse cock jokes as any librarian can tell you.

Maybe it’s these lyrics that she quotes that have aroused her…uh…ire:

and likewise if behind is in front
then dirt in truth is clean….”

What is with the right’s obsession with ass-fucking?
——-

And since I’ve noticed the Timberites inexplicable failure to let the First Lady’s horse cock masturbation joke to go unposted upon, I offer this bit of horse cock cinematic history in hopes it might provide a key to Dubyan psychopathology:

Caligula

Equus

That short animated bit that Lenny Bruce did about why the Masked Man (i.e. The Lone Ranger) never stayed around to accept thanks or presents for his ever-timely interventions. If you haven’t seen this you really owe it to yourself. It’s absolutely hilarious. Yet more evidence of just how far ahead of his time Lenny was. (I found it many years ago appended to the end of a video of one of his last performances, I’d skip his routine and go straight to the cartoon.)

Indeed. Some might call it “free-basing.”

Can Liberals nominate leftiste house-troll abb1 for high office in revenge? He makes as much sense as this such person…

WTF is with this? abb1 may irk you but s/he hardly strikes me as a troll.

If you want to some real trollishness hide yourself over to KD’s or MY’s site and keep an eye out for “Al.”

Now if you want something closer to trollishness there’s always this: FDR was no Hoover, and Hoover was no Harding. FDR, liar and economic idiot, extraordinaire.

Yeah, Harding, Hoover and FDR in one sentence and who gets called an “economic idiot.” Get me a passel of such global village idiots, stat.

Now bring on the Procol Harum references as promised.

Bwahaha. Revel. U.s. whackos finally found an use for this old, stale, grumpy crust.

And quoted along with rand :) He’s going to be sick on that -if he ever reads her.

Kieran thank you, that’s a keeper.

Btw anyone gets what she means with her french revolution = rousseau+descartes?