If the text in the link is all we have to go on, there is very little evidence as to the correct way for a government to respond to an economic crisis like the Great Depression. We can infer that “welfare capitalism” is the correct response, but there is no clear evidence that this is the case. We can also say that governments should not engage in protectionism in response to crises.
The first paragraph of the text is evidence that it is bad to engage in protectionism. It tells us that countries raised trade barriers against one another. You might think that this would be good because it allows countries to keep more jobs in their domestic economies (instead of supporting other countries’ economies by importing). However, the text says that global trade dropped by 30% and it implies that this harmed people all over the world. Thus, one lesson that we can draw from this is that governments should continue to allow free trade.
The next four paragraphs talk about political responses to the Depression. These paragraphs imply that the proper response to such an economic crisis is welfare capitalism. By instituting welfare capitalism, countries like Britain, France, and the US prevented themselves from falling under military dictatorship, communism, or fascism. Since all of these three systems are terrible, we can infer that the best response to an economic crisis is to institute a system of welfare capitalism.
Of course, this does not tell us what a government should do if it already has a system of welfare capitalism when it is hit by an economic crisis. There is no evidence in the text that can tell us the proper response for such a situation.
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