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“Roosevelt had dogmas of his own, but within them came a hodge-podge of ad hoc policies that could hardly be called a coherent regime and, in any case, was not even focused on recovery per se. Finally, the statism that ramped up under Hoover and grew to virulence under Roosevelt was the basic reason recovery never came during Roosevelt’s lifetime. True recovery did not take place until after World War II when certainty of the rules, albeit now much more statist, was restored.”

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Quote of the Day

...It is too clearly indefensible to treat “happiness” or the “good life” for the individual as a definable end to be achieved by a definite technique....

[ Full Quote ]

"My own view of the social-economic policy is not greatly concerned with the notion of treating the individual satisfaction-function as a welfare-function and proceeding to the notion of a social maximum in terms of some relation between individual maxima. It is too clearly indefensible to treat “happiness” or the “good life” for the individual as a definable end to be achieved by a definite technique; and even more indefensible to view the objective of social-economic policy in terms of the amount and distribution of measurable impersonal goods and services. Wealth and poverty are terribly important things, but that view of their significance seems to me an absurd over-simplication. Freedom itself, as a value per se, if far more important."

Frank H. Knight. The Role of Principles in Economics and Politics. Presidential Address delivered at the 62nd annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Chicago, 1950, published in American Economic Review 41(1), March 1951: 1-29; quote on p. 17-18.