And I pointed out that even more economists feel the government "interference" with AIG et al prevented a collapse of the financial system
You mean like this collapse?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/sectors-mainmenu-46/845
2 MARCH 2009 ... snip ... For the fourth time in six months, the federal government is giving billions of taxpayer dollars to AIG, following the latter’s announcement of a $61.7 billion fourth quarter loss — this despite the massive bailout shoveled AIG’s way by the Bush administration last September. ... snip ... During the fourth quarter of 2008, share prices fell from $4.00 at the beginning of October to about $1.50 by year’s end, and are hovering at 45 cents at the time of this writing. AIG’s per share loss in the fourth quarter of 2008 was $22.95, and the total dollar amount is the largest quarterly loss ever posted by any corporation in history. And again, this has transpired since the government lavished AIG with well over $100 billion in bailout money.
That's what has happened after more than $162 BILLION dollars has been thrown at the company. How many billions more are you willing to toss at it, gdnp? Are there no bounds to your generosity? Does the fact that the money is essentially STOLEN from taxpayers who did nothing wrong ... who didn't make the mistakes these folks made ... mean nothing to you?
Here's more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/929582.html
Monday's rescue revamp, however, gives the government so many convertible preferred shares of AIG that taxpayers could soon own almost 78 percent of the company. To critics, it means AIG already has been nationalized in all but name.
''It's a cowardly nationalization. It's a hideous and corrupted nationalization,'' said Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, which analyzes and rates banks and their risk management.
AIG should be allowed to enter bankruptcy, he said, because state insurance agencies could easily oversee the breakup of the insurance operation while the financial arms that are producing such steep losses could be liquidated.
Tell us, gdnp, what exactly are the millions of American taxpayers who didn't succumb to the greed that resulted in this *crisis* buying with that 78% share they're getting thanks to Bush's and Obama's generosity? By any chance, are any of the parties that received the $162 billion big supporters of the two parties? Are we the taxpayer just buying a share of the following liability?
(from the above link):
Also Monday, the man who led AIG from 1967 to 2005, Maurice ''Hank'' Greenberg, sued the company asserting that the company ruined his fortune by lying about its financial health. The lawsuit says Greenberg was the company's largest noninstitutional shareholder.
And do you simply have no comment about AIG Chairman Liddy being a demonstrable liar? Have years of being a Clinton supporter made you that accepting of liars like him?
One last citation concerning AIG for your consideration:
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/spreading-pain-in-aigs-bailout/
I don't know, gndp. It doesn't look like we'll be getting our money back. Someone recently observed that what's happening is the largest forced transfer of wealth in history. From them that committed no bad decisions to them that did. It makes me
.
These include the economists advising the president, the congress, and the Federal Reserve.
Who all have vested interests in pleasing the President, Congress and Federal Reserve? And of course, most of them probably graduated from college economics programs which sadly are as infested with leftists as most of colleges now days.
FDR's failure was not spending enough to bring us out of the depression...
You keep repeating this but it just an unfounded OPINION. An opinion that isn't backed by a single case you can point to where such spending ended a recession (OR depression) faster than it would have, had there been no massive increase in spending. It's an opinion that just doesn't square with the facts. Unlike you, I can point to historical case after case where doing just the opposite of increasing government spending correlated with a short recession or depression. More on that in a moment.
But first, the truth is FDR didn't raise spending just a little like you imply. Herbert Hoover, from 1930 to 1932 DOUBLED government spending. Then FDR DOUBLED it again. Federal spending went from 2.5 percent of GDP in 1929 prior to the crash to about 9 percent by 1936. Obama's projected budget calls for deficit that's about 8 percent of GNP his first year and much less (3%) thereafter. So as a percent of GDP, FDR and Hoover appear to have raised government spending about the same as Obama (if not more on a long term basis).
But at least you now appear to agree that FDR's spending didn't work. Let's look at some of the details, to pound that point home.
During FDR's First Inaugural Address in March of '33, he stated (just like Obama has recently stated) that "our greatest primary task is to put people to work." The national unemployment rate at the time was hovering around 17 percent. And from 1934 to 1940 (the next six years), the median unemployment rate was 17.2 percent. It was 17.4 percent at the end of that six year period. All that increased spending didn't help unemployment AT ALL. After five years of FDR and a doubling of government spending (no, in fact, a quadrupling of it), the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged. Any rational person would call that a FAIL.
Let's look at the stock market, since you keep pointing to that as the evidence this current crisis calls for emergency action (you do that because all the other statistics seem to suggest this downturn was and may still be no worse than the 1981-82 recession, which we got out of without massive redistribution of wealth and deficit spending).
As you'll notice in
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia1900.html , the Dow was about 380 just before the crash in 1929. Hoover's doubling of government spending clearly had no positive effect over the next 2 years. The Dow just dropped and dropped ... down to a low of 42. Then, in the month's leading up to the 1932 election, the Dow began to climb ... back to about a 100. Obviously, that wasn't because of FDR's "New Deal" policies since they hadn't been implimented yet. The timing might suggest that folks just thought someone new in the Whitehouse would be a good thing. So the market responded. In any case, when FDR took office, the Dow stood at about 100.
In his first 100 days (like Obama is now trying to do), FDR instituted his New Deal. I suggest that even more optimism took the Dow to about 150, where it stalled as the effects of that New Deal spending actually began to be felt in the economy. There really is no other explanation (you, of course, can try to offer one). The Dow remained about 150 for 2 years. In other words, all that spending that was occuring was again having NO EFFECT.
Then, the Supreme Court struck down some key elements of the New Deal legislation, including the National Industrial Recovery Act, in July 1935, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, in January 1936. Notice that at that moment, the Dow started climbing again, reaching 187 at the end of 1937. Like I've been saying, end government interference and the free market will take care of the problem.
But FDR couldn't leave well enough alone. During 1936 and early 1937, he packed the court with his own people, leading to reversals of the earlier Supreme Court decisions in the spring of 1937. This put power back into the New Deal agenda. And look what happened immediately after that? The Dow collapsed back to 100. In other words, interference again sent the Dow tumbling.
Yes, is did soon climb back up to 150 ... but it never got any higher. Seven years after FDR began the new deal, despite delta's in government spending (in terms of GDP/GNP) that are certainly comparable to what Obama has now proposed, the Dow was still less than half the 1929 value. Given the fact that in numerous other recessions and depressions where government didn't increase spending to that extent and even reduced it, the Dow was breaking new highs in 7 years time, a rational person would have to call Roosevelt's spending approach a FAIL.
Now I've already mentioned FDR's Secretary of the Treasury and what he thought of the success of FDRs spending approach. FAIL. (I noticed you had no comment). Well let's add another name. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. He is an acclaimed New Deal historian and widely seen as an admirer of FDR. Yet, in his book "The National Experience" (from 1963), he wrote "Though the policies of the Hundred Days had ended despair, they had not produced recovery." If he could see it, why are so many liberals still regurgitating the myth that FDR's policies lead to recovery?
The second collapse of the economy in September 1937 occurred in the midst of all that massive New Deal spending ... in the midst of government spending that was FOUR TIMES what it had been prior to the 1929 crash ... in the midst of spending at levels (as a percent of GDP) comparable to those Obama projects during his first term. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% to 19%. In just two months, 4 million people lost their jobs. (Hey, isn't that number familiar?
) National income fell 13 percent, production fell almost 50 percent and profits fell 78 percent. All far worse statistics than our current ones. To many it looked like the beginning of another depression.
Now tell us, gdnp ... would you have doubled government spending again in order to speed recovery from that second collapse? Of course you would have, if you REALLY believe what you are now claiming. But FDR didn't. His main response was a relatively modest and quite delayed spending program. And lo and behold, the recession was over by 1939. So maybe FDR had finally learned a lesson that apparently you still haven't.
That lesson should be obvious. You can't spend your way out of recessions or depressions. Chances are, you will only make them worse. Even the Brookings Institute (a left-leaning organization even back then) seems to have recognized that truth. In 1935, it published a report on the impact of the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and concluded that "on the whole
it retarded recovery." So even they suggested FDR's approach was a FAIL. And in that 900 page report they published, they didn't claim "if only he'd spent more".
As further proof of what I claim, I challenge you to look at what happened in all the instances in our history where the government didn't increase spending during a recession or depression but instead cut it. Look at the recessions/depressions in 1815, 1837, 1873, 1893, 1920, 1958 or 1979. In every one of those, the government cut spending and in every one of them the economy recovered much faster than it did during the New Deal ... or now.
Consider the depression of 1837. It was so serious that 4 million people lost their jobs (that was a lot back then compared to the size of the population). Out of 850 banks in the US, 343 outright failed and another 62 partially failed. Property values that had been in a speculative bubble (much like ours) collapsed dramatically. It looked a lot like what you folks warn us will happen if we don't intervene in a massive way. And a democrat President, Grover Cleveland, in response just cut taxes AND spending. And lo and behold, the economy recovered relatively quickly.
In February 1921, President Harding inherited (like Obama claims he inherited) one of the sharpest recessions in US history. Unemployment rose over 700% in just one year. Production fell 23%. The stock market dropped 18%. Yet within a year, it was over and the economy was booming. What happened to make this possible? Perhaps the answer is that Harding cut government spending by 40%, instead of massively increasing it like FDR and Obama.
So in example after example ... that you folks simply ignore (because you want to believe an opinion based on *hope* and a false understanding of the New Deal) ... we see that cutting government spending led to recovery. Yet you and Obama insist we must raise government spending to unprecedented levels and saddle our children with over twice the national debt they now face. I shake my head and roll my eyes.
I think you have a problem differentiating cause from effect. I'm guessing that the Federal spending in Louisiana in the fall of 2005 was the result of Katrina, not the cause.
ROTFLOL! The year 2005 isn't related in any way to what I noted ... the shape of the recessions during the 1973 oil crisis, the 1990's tech crash, and the current recession. Looks to me like here's more actual data that you simply don't want to face, gdnp. You seem to be caught in an eddy of the river DeNial.
Stimulus bills were ineffective as long as the banking system was composed of zombie institutions that could not fulfill their roll in the economy. It was like handing out welfare dollars rather than investing in capital equipment. Which is why there should be a serious stress test of US banks, and the insolvent ones should be nationalized, cleaned up, and reprivatized.
You continue to just ignore that the OP of this thread isn't just about the trillion dollar stimulus. Why don't you want to discuss the other $7.5 trillion in deficit spending that Obama has proposed (plus the increased spending that will be balanced by greater taxes) over the next 10 years? Because you know those expenditures will be mostly welfare rather than investing in capital?
Deficit spending in an expanding economy leads to bubbles and more severe recessions when they eventually come. Deficit spending in a recession blunts the effect, leading to shallower and shorter recession.
So then tell us, gdnp, are you predicting a recession for the next 10 years? Because Obama's budget plan has us having $500 billion plus deficits for the next 10 years. That's seems to be the only logical conclusion given the logic you just offered.
Or so Keynes seemed to think.
You keep bringing up the name of Keynes as if his views weren't discredited long ago. I guess you never heard of Henry Hazlitt.
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/40499302.html
"In Keynesian policy, unemployment is never to be corrected by any reduction of money-wage-rates," Mr. Hazlitt summarizes. "Keynes recommends two main remedies. One is deficit spending (sometimes euphemistically called government 'investment'). How good is this remedy? It was tried in the United States (partly because of Keynes' recommendations) for a full decade. What were the results? ... The central and decisive fact is that heavy deficits were accompanied by mass unemployment ..." in the 1930s.
"The other main Keynesian remedy for unemployment is low interest rates, artificially produced by 'the Monetary Authority.' Keynes incidentally admits ... that such artificially low interest rates can only be produced by printing more money, i.e. by deliberate inflation. But we may let this pass for a moment. The question immediately before us is: Did low interest rates prevent mass unemployment? ...
"In sum, over this period of a dozen years low interest rates did not eliminate unemployment. On the contrary, unemployment actually increased as interest rates went down."
Hazlitt proceeds to demonstrate that from 1949 to 1958, when the same policy of artificially pushing down interest rates was tried, "the relationship of unemployment to interest rates is almost the exact opposite of that suggested by Keynesian theory."
I guess you never heard of Milton Friedman or these economists.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9931
January 29, 2009
... snip ...
The idea of using fiscal policy to boost the economy during a downturn was championed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. Keynes argued that market economies can get stuck in a deep rut and that only large infusions of government stimulus can revive growth. He posited that high unemployment in the Great Depression was due to "sticky wages" and other market problems that prevented the return of full-employment equilibrium. Interestingly, Keynes did not offer any evidence that sticky wages were a serious problem, and later research indicated that wages actually fell substantially during the 1930s.
... snip ...
Keynesians thought that fiscal stimulus would work by counteracting the problem of sticky wages. Workers would be fooled into accepting lower real wages as price levels rose. Rising nominal wages would spur added work efforts and increased hiring by businesses. However, later analysis revealed that the government can't routinely fool private markets, because people have foresight and they are generally rational. Keynes erred in ignoring the actual microeconomic behaviour of individuals and businesses.
The dominance of Keynesianism ended in the 1970s. Government spending and deficits ballooned, but the result was higher inflation, not lower unemployment. These events, and the rise in monetarism led by Milton Friedman, ended the belief in an unemployment-inflation trade-off. Keynesianism was flawed and its prescription of active fiscal intervention was misguided. Indeed, Friedman's research showed that the Great Depression was caused by a failure of government monetary policy, not a failure of private markets, as Keynes had claimed.
... snip ...
It is difficult to find a macroeconomics textbook these days that discusses Keynesian fiscal stimulus as a policy tool without serious flaws, which is why the current $800-billion proposal has taken many macroeconomists by surprise. John Cochrane of the University of Chicago recently noted that the idea of fiscal stimulus is "taught only for its fallacies" in university courses these days. Thomas Sargent of New York University noted that "the calculations that I have seen supporting the stimulus package are back-of-the-envelope ones that ignore what we have learned in the last 60 years of macroeconomic research."
... snip ...
It is not clear whether Keynesian beliefs or political factors are the main driver for the $800-billion stimulus plan. But as Harvard University's Robert Barro noted in disapproval of the stimulus plan, just because the economy is in crisis, it does "not invalidate everything we have learned about macroeconomics since 1936."
Or do you just find it convenient to ignore Friedman?
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/would-keynes-have-supported-the-stimulus-bill
In the 1960s, Keynesian economics was fully mainstream, enshrined in textbooks. Macroeconomists of that period believed that they could control macroeconomic fluctuations with great precision, based on mathematical equations that were fit to historical data. The statistical techniques produced what were called macroeconometric models, or macro models for short. The precise policy adjustments were known as “fine tuning.”*
... snip ...
This precise, “engineering” view of macroeconomics was attacked from a number of directions. ... snip ... Milton Friedman argued that the macroeconometric models were not nearly reliable enough to support “fine tuning.” He warned, particularly in his 1967 presidential address to the American Economic Association, that attempts to use inflation to reduce unemployment would prove to be self-defeating as workers began to realize the need to demand wage increases in anticipation of higher prices.
Over the 15 years following his address, economic events played out in a way that vindicated Friedman and discredited the fine tuners. First, inflation accelerated. Second, starting in 1971, President Nixon tried to implement the fine-tuners’ solution for inflation, which was wage and price controls. This failed, leading to dreadful economic performance, with both unemployment and inflation at high levels.
Sorry, gdnp, but if Obama carries through with his policies, I fear that's what's coming again ... both high unemployment and high inflation.
Still not convinced? Read this:
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/10/29/its-best-keynes-remain-forgott . It not only explains the flaws in Keynesian economics but shows a striking comparison in performance, when it comes to inflation and the frequency of recessions, between the Keynesian approach and the approach that Friedman proposed replace it, Monetarism, wherein controlling monetary growth, controls inflation. It notes that "an examination of post-WWII until monetarism's successful implementation by Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker in the 1980s shows the U.S. experienced eight recessions during 1947-1982. During this 36-year period, CPI-U inflation (year-over-year) was above four percent in 19 years." In comparison, "monetarism has almost eliminated U.S. inflation. During 1983-2007, inflation has been above four percent only five times. Similarly, only two recessions have occurred, one of which was the technical recession following 9/11/01."
In fact, the data on recessions that I cited earlier in this post proves that Keynes was just plain wrong. In case after case, doing just the opposite of what Keynes advocated led to short recessions and even short depressions. And in the case of the Great Depression, I showed that doing what Keynes suggested prolonged it. So I renew my challenge to you and the rest ... if you really want us to believe Keynes had it right, provide historical examples where massive government spending successfully shortened recessions or depressions ... rather than lengthen them ... and where massive government spending reduced unemployment more than occurs naturally. (crickets)
You really should read this in it's entirety.
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YzVhZmI5MDAxMDEyZGIzMWVlZTUzZWU1ZDY2ZjExNTQ=
I know it's a source you can't stand but it does an excellent job of taking Keynesian economics apart. I'll quote a few of the notable passages from it:
Democrats and their favorite economists spent the past 25 years bemoaning the “twin deficits” of the 1980s and then claimed that the strong economy of the late 1990s was the result of President Clinton’s fiscal restraint — the precise opposite of “fiscal stimulus.” Also working in the anti-Keynesian mode, former treasury secretary Robert Rubin co-authored a 2004 paper with forecaster Allen Sinai and Peter Orzsag of the Brookings Institution, who now has been tapped by Obama to lead the Office of Management and Budget. They argued that “budget deficits decrease national saving, which reduces domestic investment and increases borrowing abroad.” Big budget deficits, warned Rubin, Orzsag, and Sinai, would “reduce future national income” and risk a “decline in confidence [which] can reduce stock prices.”
... snip ...
Many of the economists who repeatedly prophesied in ominous fashion about the dangers of relatively trivial deficit spending during the Reagan and Bush years have inexplicably become enthusiastic supporters of deficits likely to exceed 10 percent of GDP during the Obama administration.
... snip ...
In 1978, future Nobel laureate Robert Lucas Jr. wrote an obituary for these ideas, “After Keynesian Economics,” along with Thomas Sargent of the University of Minnesota. They showed that “Keynesian . . . predictions were wildly incorrect and that the doctrine on which they were based is fundamentally flawed.” The hubris of expert demand-management through fiscal policy should have suffered a permanent loss of credibility 30 years ago. But memory is short.
I especially like this ...
If Keynesian theorists refuse to accept any evidence as contradicting their theory, they are practicing a secular theology, not science.
Are you practicing theology or science, gdnp?
More:
a 1999 study by Christina Romer showed that the average length of recessions from 1887 to 1929 was 10.3 months — without any Keynesian spending schemes — while the average recession from 1948 to 2000 lasted 10.7 months.
And why is Obama's target only 3 to 4 million jobs (and mind you, he initially claimed he'd add that many but now it's apparently just a claim to keep 4 million that might otherwise be lost)? From the above link:
After the 1975 recession, employment grew by 6.2 million jobs in two years and 10.2 million in three. After the 1981–82 recession, employment grew by 5.5 million jobs in two years and 10.1 million in three.
With all these Keynesian loving economists claiming to be right, Obama's target sure doesn't seem very ambitious.
You keep mentioning Keynes as if you think he would support Obama's budget plans that will increase the national debt by $8.5 trillion over the next 10 years (and that's assuming things go as *well* as Obama *hopes*). That would only be the case if he thought the next 10 years will be one long recession/depression. Right? Is that really what you thinks going to happen under Obama?
There is certainly the risk that the Fed will overshoot with their monetary stimulus and Washington will overshoot with their fiscal stimulus and inflation will result.
You don't think doubling the national debt and yearly deficits in excess of $500 billion a year being the new norm isn't overshooting? You don't think that will result in inflation?
I tell you what, gndp ... you invest like it won't and I will invest like it will, and we'll compare asset growth a decade from now.
On the other hand, if there is inflation then the 10 trillion dollar debt will be easier to pay off, won't it?
Wrong. That notion was also thoroughly discredited over the past 50 years. In fact, if what you claim is true, why all the fuss about deficits by democrats (and republicans) all these years? They could have eliminated our National Debt years ago by just inflating it away. Right?
The truth is that even Keynes spoke ardently against the dangers of inflation, calling it a crime by politicians to steal the savings of citizens. Don't believe me? Well here are Keyne's own words:
http://books.google.com/books?id=B-...9LiwDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbtrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. ... snip ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
Because of that view, look back and you'll see that Keynes only recommended spending that would result in inflation UNDER 2 percent. Not the double digit inflation that is more than likely going to result from Obama's massive spending and the abandonment of monetarism.
Chrysler went through a crisis a few years back, the government lent them money, they returned to profitability and paid it back, saving thousands of jobs.
http://www.heritage.org/research/regulation/bg276.cfm
July 13, 1983
The Chrysler Bail-Out Bust
... snip ...
The popular version of the Chrysler bail-out is simply a fairy tale. The bail-out is a bust. Closer scrutiny of it reveals that the "great success" rests on a bedrock of myths and half truths.
... snip ...
Myth No. 1: Government loan guarantees prevented the Chrysler Corporation from going bankrupt.
... snip ...
Myth No. 2: Federal 1oan guarantees were justified because Chrysler's financial problems were brought on by the federal government.
... snip ...
Myth No. 3: The loan. guarantees cost nothing since Chrysler has not gone bankrupt.
... snip ...
Myth No. 4: Chrysler's top management has taken deep salary cuts until Chrysler's financial problems are resolved.
... snip ...
Myth No. 5: Chrysler's new-found profitability shows that it is on the road to financial recovery.
... snip ...
Myth No. 6: Chrysler's survival has improved America's position in the international automobile market.
I hope you actually read that, gdnp.
Nope. By lending money to the car companies that can come up with a viable business plan to return to profitability once the economy turns around. At which point the money can be paid back.
When pigs fly.
Actually, just an admission that the economy is too large, too complex, with too many variables, to predict with any degree of certainty.
Which is exactly why Keynesian economics is doomed to fail ... why governments have historically, in case after case, been unable to successfully manage economies and make their citizens wealthy ... why the free market system is so superior.
Not do you know what would happen if the government had allowed AIG, Bear Stears, and then Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Citi, Chase, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, et al to fail.
Ah, but I do. I need only look to past historical example. The free market and it's institutions are perfectly capable of handling the complexity of this. With LESS uncertainty than Keynesian economics and government management.
Quote:
When it's been tried in the past, it hasn't.
evidence?
I showed you some of mine above. Now show me some of yours. You do have some, don't you?
Yeah, jumping out a second story window of a burning building is a big gamble.
You continue to dishonestly overstate the seriousness of the current recession. Even in March, the national unemployment rate is STILL under that of both the 1973-75 and 1981-82 recessions. The percent drop in real GDP is still far smaller (
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/what-does-62-percent-mean/ ). Industrial production hasn't declined as much as it did back then. Inflation is FAR lower than it was then. Interest rates are still much smaller. The misery index is far lower. All this was discussed with you on a previous thread. Where you just ignored these facts. You just continue to ignore it and regurgitate the same MYTH to justify what you and Obama support. One begins to question your real motivations, gdnp.
Quote:
We already had the discussion regarding why comparing WW2 spending to what Obama is doing is bogus. I don't recall your side winning that argument.
You seem to miss this quite frequently. Perhaps you should pay more attention.
Well since you insist, let me just repeat my arguments from the last time this was discussed (the same thread where your myth about how bad this recession is was debunked) and see if THIS TIME you can actually come up with something to challenge them.
From (
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135124&page=4 post #147):
Originally Posted by Alt+F4
World War II started in 1939 and shortly afterwards the Great Depression was over. Billions were poured into the economy, which was almost entirely controled by the federal government. I know libertarians can't stand to hear this, but it worked.
Now as to this claim, note that there are a few major differences between the sort of programs the money was spent on in WW2 and what it will be spent on in Obama's stimulus package.
First, the WW2 money was spent on building weapons because there was a REAL need. Most of the things the Obama spending will go towards are not really needed. In fact, you probably can't even tell us how they arrived at the amounts being spent on various things. That's because they just pulled those numbers out of the air. They aren't based on need.
And to build the WW2 weapons, they had to build lots and lots of new industry ... which created the means by which people would be employed and would create new wealth after the war was over. Plus, WW2 spending created an entire new technological base in dozens of fields. We came out of WW2 the manufacturing and technological powerhouse of the entire world. The Obama program, in contrast, will mostly fund temporary jobs like redecorating offices and building things that will have very little to do with growing the economy long term or increasing our production capacity. Sorry, but a road to Vegas will not do that. It's just PORK.
Nor will keeping people in homes they couldn't afford and still won't be able afford after the money runs out. In fact, for those people to keep those home you will have to continue to STEAL money from those who didn't make such bad decisions and give it to them. What's going to be the price tag of that? Obama announced $75 billion for this one item alone and I heard the final pricetag may run to over $250 billion. Bet its double even that. And Let me guess. They all voted for Obama.
And Obama's programs are not going to alter technology any significant way either (despite all the rhetoric). In fact, his emphasis on green and bogus global warming hysteria will likely damage our relative productivity relative to the rest of the world ... make us even less competitive.
And there are more differences that make your claim absolutely silly. Do you know how much those WW2 jobs paid? Very little compared to the expectations of Obama, democrats and those who will benefit from Obama's program. EACH job created under Obama's program (assuming as many jobs are created as is claimed) will cost between $200,000 and $300,000. I assure you that the jobs created during WW2 cost a fraction of that.
And what sort of housing did they get for their work back in WW2? A quonset hut? A fox hole? And what sort of food did they get? K rations? Were they all promised TVs too? Of course not. So don't try and claim the WW2 experience proves the stimulus package will work to recover the economy now. It only makes you look desperate to find ANY example that might support this bogus notion that government can manage economies better than a free market. The truth is they can't.
Take a look at that thread. There was no response from your friends. They simply threw out the claim then ran. Are you going to do the same thing here? Are you going to simply ignore all evidence presented to you. Let me repeat the quote I noted earlier: "If Keynesian theorists refuse to accept any evidence as contradicting their theory, they are practicing a secular theology, not science." Does that apply to you?
Quote:
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started .... and an enormous debt to boot!"
This is your argument?
A case in point. Your socialist theology forces you to simply ignore the the words of FDR's Secretary of the Treasury after 8 years of trying to stimulate an economy out of depression ... after 8 years of trying to fix the unemployment problem.
It's not just me that doesn't believe him. Nobel prize winning economists like Krugman and Stiglitz think we need a larger stimulus as well.
All you prove is that Krugman and Stiglitz are not dealing with this as scientists, either ... but as advocates of the socialist religion they've both promoted with vigor for a long time. Argue the facts I've presented, gdnp. Don't appeal to authority by throwing out the names of Obama lovers who also have ignored those facts.
I've asked before: what outcome would you accept as convincing evidence that the economic plan was a success?
Why should I deal in hypotheticals that probably aren't going to happen anyway, gdnp? Try to deal with the many facts I've provided in this post instead ... rather than running from them again. So that we all be spared the misery that is coming as a result of Obama's *good intentions*.
Here's another clue for you, BAC. I don't have a "side".
Sure you don't.
Whatever stimulus effect it had on the economy was more than counterbalanced by the lives lost, the children maimed, the refugees displaced, and the infrastructure destroyed. It would have been better spent fixing bridges.
You're entitled to your opinion. Mine is that this another case where history will prove Bush was right and Obama wrong. The problem with your side
)) is that you never look at the opportunity costs of having done nothing about Iraq. Something I've pointed out in the past and again, you've run from.
BTW ... Happy St Patrick's Day.
