Here's a nice, long article that ably presents the other side of the argument from what you'll usually read here. Say what you will about the New Deal, writes Michael Hiltzik, but American gained a great many benefits from it, and how many Americans would really want to do without them?
During the years of the New Deal, America's government built as it never had before—or has since.
The New Deal physically reshaped the country. To this day, Americans still rely on its works for transportation, electricity, flood control, housing, and community amenities. The output of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, represents a magnificent bequest to later generations. The WPA produced, among many other projects, 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings built, rebuilt, or expanded. Among the latter were 41,300 schools.
[. . .]
A good portion of Franklin Roosevelt's immortality rests upon the New Deal's physical works; but even more rests upon its transformation of the nation's social and economic structures.
Here we must consider Americans' relationship with what is, after all, their government. The New Dealers did not think about government in the limited terms of their predecessors, as an agency of national defense and little else. They did not perceive it as an antagonist of the common man, an enemy of liberty, or an entity interested in its own growth for growth's sake. They understood that it was a powerful force and that its power could be exercised by inaction as well as action, to very different ends. The condition of the American people when the New Dealers assumed office demanded ameliorative action, and this they strived to deliver. They did not invariably achieve their goals, but in appraising their performance it is important to acknowledge that the crisis they addressed was uniquely cataclysmic in American history, and that suitable precedent for addressing it simply did not exist.
To really talk about the New Deal, I think you have to separate the physical works from what Hiltzin calls the transformation of our social and economic structures. The infrastructure legacy -- 651,000 miles of highway, 8,000 parks, 41,300 schools -- can be debated on cost-effectiveness and whether the money could have been better used by the private sector, but there's no question the list of accomplishments was impressive and did change the country for the better.
It's the change in the relationship between government and citizens that has troubled conservatives more. Hiltzik notes, with approval, that the New Deal "instilled in Americans an unshakable faith that their government stands ready to succor them in times of need" and that it "established the concept of economic security as a collective responsibility." He has much to say about the positive results of that collectivization, nothing at all about the downside. Like a crushing debt burden and obligations we won't be able to fulfill, not to mention a dangerous shift from the concept of individual rights to collective prerogatives.
