GED 132 - US Govt-unit 1 question #3 - Essay Example

Question # 3: How did the role of government in peoples lives change during the Great Depression? The effects of the Great Depression were far-reaching. Many of the policies that are followed by the government of the United States of America are the results of the hardships that the people of America had to face before Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal. The New Deal was a landmark and changed the way social policies of governments worked in America. The idea of providing welfare to the people and ensuring a basic standard of living was something that originated during the intense crisis that the world faced during the Great Depression and the economic theories that were created out of the strife of that period.

The greatest contribution of this era in changing the role of the government vis-à-vis the people of America was the New Deal. This was introduced by the then president of the United States of America, Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal led to a lot of new legislations that helped get the people back on their feet after the stock market crash of 1929 that had spiraled into the Great Depression. This included, during the first hundred days of the year 1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, a program that was supposed to enable unemployed people to receive a certain amount of money that would help them through the lean period that the Great Depression gave rise to.

The period following this was one of great productivity as the government set people to work on many projects of infrastructure improvement that led to the creation of more jobs in a chain reaction that further boosted the process of recovery (Government by the People). The providing of jobs to people who were unemployed also helped dispel the myth that poverty was an essential result of idleness and laziness. As a result of the New Deal, poverty came to be recognized as an effect of governmental policies and greater macroeconomic pressures.

Another important contribution of the Great Depression was the creation of a social security net that would cover sections of the populations that had been marginalized and had been undergoing great hardships during the Great Depression. This covered the unemployed, the aging and the disabled. Through the years, this program has been expanded to include the survivors of the beneficiaries who were dependants but has essentially catered to the needs of the helpless (Government by the People). The era following the Great Depression helped create a framework whereby the people who occupied the margins of the society owing to their cultural and economic deprivations had opportunities to move out of the vicious cycle of poverty that had been generated by the Great Depression.

The New Deal included provisions for women and children who had begun to get recognition as a vulnerable section and also for the African Americans who faced great problems during the Great Depression. Thus, the Great Depression greatly increased the contribution of the government in the everyday lives of the people.Works CitedMagleby, David B; Light, Paul C. (2009).Government by the People. New York: Longman.