I don't know where you get your history, Strick, but the Depression was pretty much over by 1937 or 38. I was just a kid, but I was there at the time, and I remember my father's work history and that of our family friends. And since I lived during that era, I've read up on it quite a bit, and related what I read to what I actually remember.

To say that FDR got us out of the Depression by getting us into World War II is a canard, and the kind of revisionist history that a lot of right-wingers would like you to believe. The New Deal, part of which was aimed at putting people to work directly rather than waiting for tax cuts to the rich to "trickle down" actually did work. And it would work again, if tried.

Part of the purpose of the recent huge tax cuts for the rich was to precipitate the record deficit we now have, allowing the Bush administration to claim that they have to cut all the old "entitlement" social programs, including Social Security (which is not an entitlement program--we paid taxes for it), because the nation can no longer afford them.

And just whose fault might that be?   

Don Firth