That Used to be True (part 3) New Deal and Postwar
This is part 3 of a 4-part series that discusses elements of the high school curriculum that were true enough when I taught (2005-2015) but aren’t true any longer.
This is the third of a 4-part series on how our national story has changed in the past few years. Things that used to be considered a part of our history (as reflected in the Virginia school curriculum I taught only a few years ago) are now weird curiosities. There are many parts of our story that seemed to be true as of only a few years ago that a history teacher simply couldn’t teach nowadays without providing a serious explanation.
New Deal economic reforms. One of the pat lessons taught in US history classes is that the Smoot Hawley Tariff, which increased tariffs as a way to protect American manufacturing, actually hastened the Depression and made it worse. Students in Virginia schools didn’t learn much economics in their social studies classes, but one nugget of macroeconomics every student learned was that high tariffs can cause economic harm. Under Trump, tariffs became a routine tool of statecraft – and stage management – and have done harm to farmers, auto makers, and other industries.
Other economic reforms from the New Deal included organizations and laws to promote financial stability, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Glass Steagall Act, which regulated investment banks, and the Wagner Act, which made it easier for workers to organize unions. Glass Steagall was repealed in the 1980s – and this repeal played no small part in the economic crash of the first decade of the 21st Century. Reforms created after the crash, including Dodd Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), have been attacked and neutralized by Republican Congresses. Meanwhile, labor unions have been under sustained attack, worker organizing rules have been rolled back, and labor union membership has dropped precipitously since the beginning of the Second gilded age. Early in Trump’s second term, he shut down the CFPB.
One of the central conclusions about FDR’s term in office was that he fundamentally altered the relationship of citizens to their government. The government took broad responsibility to keep the economy on an even keel. Programs such as Social Security (enacted in the 1930s), Medicare and Medicaid(1960s), and the Affordable Care Act (2010s) expanded income security to Americans, while food stamps (now known as SNAP), Head Start, school lunches, and Pell Grants helped close the gap between privileged and impoverished families. Early in Trump’s second term, these programs were all in severe jeopardy
A U.S.-led world: Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine, NATO. The Truman Doctrine of providing assistance to any country threatened by totalitarianism was an essential component of our foreign policy from March 1947 until March 2025. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed as a defensive alliance among the United States and western European countries to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, but continued after its first mission had been achieved as the primary instrument of western foreign policy. U.S. influence was derived from a combination of “hard” (military force) and “soft” (diplomacy, assistance, etc.) power. Foreign aid was an essential component of this influence. In a remarkably short period of time, the Trump administration dismantled almost this entire structure of influence. The Agency for International Development was dismantled and its aid was stopped. The U.S. switched sides in the Ukraine war, putting pressure on our former ally to make concessions while coddling our former adversary. We stepped away from our longstanding commitment to NATO, leaving our former allies discussing the way forward in a world where the U.S. could not be counted on.
The Middle Class Society. Returning GIs after World War II – or the white ones, at least – faced an economy that was ready to break loose. Three years of pent up consumer demand, high savings rates, and direct aid such as the GI bill and federal housing assistance quickly alleviated fears that the returning soldiers would be unable to find work. Newly unionized industrial workers enjoyed increased wages and benefits and the country enjoyed a long period of low unemployment and rapid growth. A highly progressive tax rate helped create the largest ever participation in the middle class. African Americans were largely denied these benefits, but for many white people, the path to the middle class was flat and wide.
These gains have largely been reversed. Income for workers started to stagnate in the late 1970s. Forty years of supply side policies (regressive tax cuts, increasing deficits, and steady attrition of funding on social programs) have left our infrastructure in tatters, restrictions on social safety net programs, and increased inequality in income distribution.
According to Census data, analyzed in a Pew report, the middle class has been declining for four decades. The United Way showed that the number of people working fulltime jobs with healthcare and other benefits has declined precipitously. For the first time ever, a recent study reported that the average blue collar worker does not earn enough in a year to afford the basic necessities: food, housing, healthcare, etc. Forty years ago, it took a worker making the average wage 38 weeks to “provide;” now, it is 53 weeks.
The US stands 40th in child mortality; 32nd in Internet access; 39th in access to clean drinking water; 61st in high school enrollment; and 25th in overall well-being 9social progress index). Jeff Daniels’s immortal rant “When you say the US is #1, I don’t know what the f*** you’re talking about: Yosemite?” seems more relevant than ever.