Stimulus Packages: 1929 to 2008By Thomas E. BrewtonThe current  Republican and Democratic economic stimulus plan is the  latest version of a much tried and repeatedly untrue liberal- progressive panacea.Stimulus packages first surfaced in this country, under President  Herbert Hoover, as a product of the liberal-progressive-socialist  doctrine of the early 20th century.  They failed miserably throughout  the Depression and haven't worked anytime since then.The bottom line is that stimulus packages don't do the intended job  of jump-starting the economy.  (See http://www.thomasbrewton.com/ index.php/weblog/why_tax_rebates_are_delusional/ ).  Instead they  work against righting misallocation of economic resources and add to  inflationary pressures that rob people of the value of their savings.Tax cuts, coupled with reduced government spending, are the only  effective and non-inflationary economic stimulants.Why then have one-shot stimulus packages?Socialist theory since its inception in the first decades of the 19th  century had always preached that industry could best be managed by  intellectuals, working through industry councils and bureaucratic  managers.  Imposing public regulatory control (what was called  socialization) on business was presumed to make it more efficient and  thereby to raise wages and employment.20th century American business itself ironically was partly  responsible for the popularity of the idea of scientific management  in government and its manifestation in stimulus packages.As corporations grew to hitherto unimaginable size around the time of  World War I, management became more structured.  The professional  manager came into being, and scientific management techniques came  into vogue.  To that end, the Harvard Business School was founded in  1908.  Business leaders and the general public alike believed that  the same highly successful business management approach should be  applied to local, state, and national government.Such was the essence of early Progressivism and its love affair with  experts. Note that Progressivism was embraced by both liberal  Republicans and liberal Democrats.President Herbert Hoover was a leading exponent of Progressivism in  government, despite his characterization by liberal historians as a  laissez-faire conservative.  So much so that Austrian School  economists date the inception of the New Deal to the inauguration of  Hoover in 1929.  Much of what President Franklin Roosevelt did with  disastrous results, from 1933 until late 1940, was merely a  continuation and expansion of President Hoover's policies.As Amity Shlaes wrote: ( see http://www.thomasbrewton.com/index.php/ weblog/the_raw_deal/ )"The premier line in the standard history is that Herbert Hoover was  a right-winger whose laissez-faire politics helped convert the 1929  Crash into the Great Depression. But a review of the new president's  actions reveals him to be a control freak, an interventionist in  spite of himself. Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which  worsened a global downturn, even though he had long lived in London  and understood better than almost anyone the interconnectedness of  markets. He also bullied companies into maintaining high wages and  keeping employees on their payrolls when they could ill afford to do  so. Perhaps worst of all, he berated the stock market as a  speculative sinner even though he knew better. For example, Hoover  opposed shorting as a practice, a policy that frightened markets at  an especially vulnerable time."Stephen W. Carson, on the Mises.org website, writes about the first  stimulus package.  Read it here http://blog.mises.org/archives/ 007710.asp .  Be sure to read the 1929 Time Magazine article linked  in Mr. Carson's post.  It's accessible here: http://www.time.com/time/ printout/0,8816,738193,00.html .Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.  The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of  writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776http://www.thomasbrewton.com/Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com