No, you're dead wrong. The United States was continuing to do despairingly bad under keynesian economics during the whole Roosevelt administration despite all of the socialist make-work projects, confiscation of gold to make the dollar an abstraction rather than an actual value. Had WWII NOT flattened worldwide industrial infrastructure the United States would still be floundering about looking for some other magical thinking.

Like we have returned to doing after the drunken orgy of post WWII expansion. Now that the world has caught up with us we are left with this huge hang-over from government expansion -- the national debt.

Prove me wrong.

You know you can't because my description is not disprovable. Just as your version is not disprovable.

Economics is just opinion, wishful thinking and personal beliefs. But with really amazing tools for describing things. It's like a great vocabulary for describing fine art. Sister Wendy as an economist.

Economic theory can't be proven. Yours mine or anyone's. Prove that printing $40B/month is inflationary.

The biggest mistake in the 30's was the feds contraction of the money supply. This caused what would have been a recession to turn into the great depression.

Prove me wrong

WWII ended the Great Depression, PERIOD! It was NOT Roosevelt!

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Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

WWII caused Government spending and that is what really ended the depression.
The deficit was near 100% of GDP after the war.........

Actually, the great depression was over by the time WWII started. And after WWII there was another huge recession. To say WWII benefited our economy is to look at economics with closed eyes All WWII did was decrease unemployment. The economy itself was already recovering and began recovering around 1933. In 1933 unemployment was 25% and in 1936 it fell to 11%.

I agree that history has proven time and time again that in the last 100 years or so, Republican Presidencies align more-than-coincidentally with the largest increases to national debt and government spending, while Democratic Presidencies align with the best budget surpluses (or smallest increases in spending such as under Obama). These are unavoidable inconvenient facts for the Republican party. The last truly great Republican President was Theodore Roosevelt.

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Yawn.

Where does the government get THEIR money? The government spending you mentioned was BORROWED money that was eventually paid back with money that came from PRIVATE citizens and industry.

Yes, it was tough times after the war. I heard all about it from my Dad and others. The DIFFERENCE between then and now is that they gutted it up and started working down the debt. There's no indication that ANYONE in Washington today has enough character to do that.

The spending for war goods made LOTS of jobs and provided a means for companies to get back on their feet. The PEOPLE that were WORKING bought war bonds to fund it enough to struggle through the war. As PRIVATE investing slowly started taking place, there was enough tax base to eventually pay down the debt to a reasonable level.

The key is that PRIVATE investment is what generated the money that paid down the debt. The government NEVER provides money. They have no revenue stream except the money they get from PRIVATE citizens and PRIVATE companies.

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

The depression was NOT over at the beginning of WWII. Things were better, but it was NOT over.

The president is only PART of the overall national debt and government spending as you put it. During those wonderful times, go back and make a list of which parties controlled the house and senate during those periods.

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2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

I just love it when you scold me. It makes me feel so special.

Now let’s get the rolled up newspaper out and take a swipe back with, ya know, facts ‘n stuff, rather than the emptiness of your opinion.

Between about 1935 and 1940 US GDP rose continually, except briefly during mild downturn. I admit I forgot about the mild downturn in my previous comment. (It sucks to get old, as you’re clearly aware). Here is evidence for you:

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/US_GDP_10-60.jpg/330px-US_GDP_10-60.jpg[/img]

Anyway, what was harder to fix was the vast amount of unemployment. While it had it’s peaks and valleys over the decade of the 1930s, it mostly increased. What do you expect, after all; this was another fiasco created by Republican incompetence. It takes years to fix a Depression and the Republicans have a track record of the biggest and best fuk ups in US history. All the same, time is a key requirement when recovering from a downturn. Well that or attempts to lessen the impact of downturns. They happened frequently and harshly through this time, and that is part of what the Social Security Act of 1935 was about.



Other than your specious and clearly projecting comment about magical thinking, I do agree that the effects of WWII, most notably the massive federal debt and spending, did wonders to get the economy going again. If only we could do something like that that now. Oh, wait, we are....

I like the way you speculate about an alternate reality in the past. You should get together with one or more the other fellas on the forum and put your crystal balls together, er, figuratively speaking, of course. Theirs makes up stuff about the future and yours appears to make stuff up about the past. Put them together and you can make story lines for FOX News.

So first you scold me and claim “I’m dead wrong” and then concede that you can’t prove it. Ok. And then you change the subject. Nice. I use historical fact to help illuminate my points. You have………scolding and other condescending BS - well, okay, it is kind of fun.


Again with the weak “like a great vocabulary….” metaphor. I’m not trained in economics and clearly you aren’t either. I have no idea who Sister Wendy might be.

As I understand it, Economics is a set of mostly statistical instruments used to study small and large trends occurring over time. I haven’t looked it up, but iirc, Economics became a formal PhD equivalent degree study in the 1920s in Europe and shortly thereafter in the USA.

I’ll agree that no field of study is ever perfect. Yet some are more reliable than others and the reason organizations, enterprises, and .gov the world over turns to this field is that it has some predictive ability. Otherwise like Phrenology, it would have died out decades ago.

Facts such as these will scare Larry into writing about his beloved highschool teacher, again.

No matter how many graphs or references to 'your' side of an economical argument you care to post, do you doubt that I could dredge up an equal number of Nobel Laureate economists who would have a completely different interpretation, graphs, statistics, models, (and other goofiness) supporting a completely opposite opinion and that neither version is disprovable? If not disprovable, it ain't science. It's an art. My art is better than your art, so there!

F'instance ... The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

I can't prove you wrong. Of course, I believe almost the opposite!

It's like a religion. True believers always know the right answer and they are very fervent in their beliefs, despite the lack of (or maybe because of ...) falsifiability.

Somewhere in the mix of economic religion I guess I fall on the free market side of agnosticism. I know I cannot prove my faith. I also know that nobody else can prove theirs either. So I mutter along wrapped in my self-righteous orthodoxy damning all you apostates and heretics to eternal torment.

Or not.

So all that floated cash out there.............when it comes time to start calling it in...heard a bingo of 11 percent would pop up and it won't cover the interest.
Now WTF you going do?

I'll probably spend a few minutes trying to understand what your question means. Then I'll give up and move along.

The graph I provided above showing an increase in GDP through the 30s is factual. So you can toss the sentence above as “goofiness,” to use your term.


You appear to be a bit of a conceited nihilist. That’s okay with me.

As an aside, your “sister Wendy is an economist” comment in an earlier post made me laugh. I speculated momentarily that she was a nun who was also an economist. The thought made me LOL.


Thanks for the linked article. I enjoyed reading the article, right up until the author, Ivan Pongracic started predicting the past with his “what if” speculation, and then once more into the realm of “goofiness” or rather agenda loaded slant he dove..


From the article you prvided

Quote:

Naturally, total economic output also fell dramatically: GDP was 29 percent lower in 1933 than in 1929. And the unemployment rate hit its historic high of 25 percent in 1933.

Note that, in the article, the author did point out that your guy agreed that the refusal of the .gov to spend during the early part of the last GD was a primary reason for the spiral of the disaster.

Based on the above, the evidence suggests that you failed to prove your theory and instead redirected the subject. But I’m okay with that as your guy supported my point about the utility of massive government spending.


So just as “your guy” suggested, this is much of why the current .gov administration has been feeding the economy since GWB and his clutch of Republican morons destroyed it, again. Will it work out? I dunno. At least it is not repeating the mistakes of the past.

But anywho, you stated that you didn’t favor spending, when even “your guy” does favor it....oopse for you.