Last week, former President Obama reprised a theme from his 2012 campaign in an attack on President Trump. Misappropriating credit for the booming economy, Obama stated, “Let’s just remember when this recovery started.” This, of course, echoes what Obama said at a campaign rally on July 13, 2012, when he attacked individualism and capitalism by raving, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.” Here’s a possible origin of that bogus collectivist attack that was somehow handed down to Obama.
The above image is from the 1925 undergraduate textbook “American Economic Life: And It’s Means of Improvement,” authored by Rexford Guy Tugwell, Thomas Munro and Roy E Stryker.
The caption says it all — “No individual ever built a skyscraper.” Tugwell was a New Dealer and key adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt. In 1927, Tugwell and a group of other wanna-be collectivists traveled to the Soviet Union, where Tugwell met with Stalin.
Tugwell helped create the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and Resettlement Administration, both central planning/collectivist New Deal agencies. In addition to faiing, both were ruled unconstitutional as infringing on state power.
Read more about Tugwell in Amity Schlaes recounting of the New Deal in, “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.”