d of the 1930's this plan had lowered unemployment to 17.2%. To make these organizations it was going to take money. Roosevelt had to deficit spend, which is when the government spends more than their budget in one year, in order to obtain this money. Of course these ideas of supply and demand and active government didn't just come to him. He was influenced by John Maynard Keynes and John Stuart Mill. There philosophies were the basis of the New Deal. John Stuart Mill, who began studying economics at age 13, was one of the most influential political thinkers of the mid-Victorian period. He believed in empiricism and utilitarianism. Empiricism is the belief that legitimate knowledge comes only from experience. Utilitarianism is the belief by which things are judged right or wrong. It is judged according to their consequences. In a way he was a hypocrite. When the economy was good he believed in Laisezz-Faire, which means "hands off." If the economy was bad, though, he believed in an extended role of government. This simply meant that the government should take part in the economy and try to make it better. The New Deal was a very active government plan because it had the government working directly to make jobs and fix the economy. Mill died in 1873 and would never had a chance to talk to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a press conference Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "I brought down several books by English economists and leading American economists, I suppose I must have read different articles by fifteen different experts."(Schlesinger, Pg.650) This writing indirectly steered Roosevelt towards a plan which expanded the role of government. Mill gave Franklin D. Roosevelt the basis of the plan, but it needed to be elaborated on. John Maynard Keynes was the man to do this. John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. For many years he was an active voice in economics. In 1929 he wrote We Can Conquer Unemp...
