my what an impressive critique. "lame-o". I'll have to remember that one.
those are pretty pictures! where'd ya get em?
i cannot guess, but i can guess where you did NOT get them. You did not get them from any place that could be considered unbiased.
that is correct. the prediction of the Effects of the Stimulus plan, for example, came from the Obama Administration, and was used to sell that legislation.
you did not get them from any place that considered ALL the effects of the stimulus...
the stimulus was sold as a job and growth measure. we could keep unemployment down and get the economy humming again. Instead,
every month since June of the year it was passed has seen higher unemployment than the
highestpoint that the nice pretty little keyensian models predicted. Growth has
consistently come in at
lower than their predictions, and what has been produced has generally been the result of increases in
productivity (ie: not demand-related). Against
all their predictions (and indeed they would have probably declared it nearly impossible if someone had had the foresight to ask) capital stock
shrank even as the government began to metaphorically throw those hundreds of billions out of helicopters.
now, maybe it's just me; but it strikes me that if Every Single Prediction You Make Isn't Just Wrong, but
Wildly Off-Mark, then maybe your model is flawed.
like keeping people from homelessness
actually by delaying the correction in the housing market and by refusing to modify the mark-to-market rules that were responsible for the majority of the losses, the Obama Administration has further harmed the housing market. by attempting to keep prices artificially high, they have priced people
out. and so once again a "solution" for housing has created artificial difficulty in achieving it.
however, if you can show me where the "Stimulus" prevented mass homelessness, I would love to see it. Because I think you are talking about an entirely different program, and just screwed up and put it in this discussion.
I am familiar with the hatred republicans feel for the only president to win popular elections three times..
no hatred. he probably meant well. he just wasn't that bright to begin with (even Keynes thought he was a moron), he had no real system for making good decisions (his planned was pretty much summed up as "let's throw ideas into programs and see what sticks" - the man would set the price of gold based on what numbers felt
lucky), and the economic model that he was working with was fatally flawed.
I know how much republicans hate that people did not go hungry while the gubmint refinanced the rich and rebuilt the oligarchy that reigned prior to FDR.
well, your hypberbole aside, actually people
did go hungry. and they went hungry because FDR
destroyed massive amounts of food. One of his "let's-throw-this-out-there-and-see-what-happens" plans was to try to
deliberately make food scarce in the middle of the friggin
Depression.
yes, FDR managed to hold the nation together under the harshest conditions we had ever experienced. and yes, the new deal not only fed and housed americans, it rebuilt the economy that the oligarchs had trashed.
... you do realize that rhetoric does not count as
actual evidence?
and that quoting FDR saying that FDR did great is not much of a solid backing?
the war ended the depression, as I said above, but FDR kept the nation running (and, not incidentally, won the war).
the war didn't end the depression - it destroyed resources and forced Americans into a life of austerity through strict government rationing. Massive inflation of the monetary supply was kept under (well, mostly kept under) wraps only through the implementation of price controls, which further depressed supply. America was
worse off during the war than they had been previously. The Upsides that we got stemmed from the fact that FDR finally gave up on much of the New Deal attack on businesses. Public Procurement during the era came along with guaranteed profit for the manufacturers, and capital was safe to invest again. After the war we had the cushion of being the worlds' only provider for many manufactured and agricultural goods to cushion us, along with the dramatic cuts to government spending; both of which helped us over the hump caused by released price controls and the economic distortion of the New Deal and WWII.
and yes, New Deal policies DID improve the economy.
again, no they didn't. as I have pointed out to you - the the approaches that became known as the New Deal (in keeping with FDR's "See What Sticks" philosophy, historians struggle to find a single defining theme to describe the New Deal, and historically it's more useful as a shorthand than as an actual discussion point) lengthened and deepened the Depression, and if you want to tie in Hoovers programs (which you easily could) it
caused the Depression. The Price of a Good or Service is a function of Supply and Demand, but is set at the minimum of Price of Production. Roosevelt (and Hoover before him) never really understood that, and we all suffered for it.
Which isn't to say FDR got every decision wrong at all. He repealed the Smoot-Hawley Tarrif, for example, which brought much-needed trade back to our shores.
you are really good at spouting this stuff... not so good at showing it to have any truth. if you would like to try, it sure would be appreciated.
actually (for example) your hero is one of the villains: FDR defaulted on our debt in 1933. It went up the Supreme Court, which upheld the move.
again, it would be nice if you cited your sources
FDR Defaulted in 1933
Since you'll complain that's a right-wing source, here's a left-wing source backing it up
it is hard to argue faceless pedants. regarding Cole/Oharnian, you did expect that were would be criticism of their findings, didn't you. there are... lots.
clever lads!
whose position, apparently, presumes the idea that communism
works.....
....yeah... so, I'm gonna go with
no.....
make-work jobs aren't jobs, and they don't function economically as jobs - they are welfare with attendance and labor conditions attached. the labor theory of value was, is, and will remain
crap.
there are other appraisals of the New Deal and how it kept americans from complete personal disaster
unless, of course, you count losing your job, losing your home, and finding it extremely difficult to feed your family to be a "disaster".
(as opposed to propping up the millionaires):
what, you mean like Obama's crony capitalism did?
But again, you like history, so let's compare
results:
1920: Stock Market Collapse, Unemployment Spikes. Government Response: Cut Spending Reduce Taxes. Effect: Rapid Economic Growth, Unemployment drops to historically low levels.
1930: Stock Market Collapse, Unemployment Spikes. Government Response: Raise Spending Raise Taxes. Effect: Unemployment spikes higher, the economy shrinks for four straight years, a decade of double-digit unemployment. Market does not recover until 1953.
Late 1940's: Extremely High Inflation threatens, as does the loss from the necessary massive restructuring from a war to a peace economy. Government Response: Drastically Slash Government Spending. Effect: Unemployment stays at historically low levels, economic growth accelerates.
WORTH NOTING:
this is the single best example of the utter failure of keynesian economics. Keynesians were
UNANIMOUS that the reduction in government spending combined with the demobilization of the military would result in
mass unemployment. The Government reduced spending by
40%.
Millions of men left government service.
and yet 1946 was the single best year for the private economy in United States History. Production shot up a mind-boggling
30%. AG Hines was predicting we would collapse back into the Great Depression - Unemployment predictions from Keynesians across the country ranged between 6 and 10 million men out of work by winter of 1946.... yet unemployment stayed below
4%. Paul Samuelson predicted we would fall behind the
Soviet Union (though, to be fair, he kept predicting that. and just stubbornly kept pushing back his "we will fall behind" date as the predicted times came and went and we remained dammably ahead. as late as 1989 he was holding up the Soviet Union as proof that Socialist Command Economies can grow and "thrive").
After the repeated failures of the 1930's (which they blamed on 'greed'), the Keynesians put themselves out into a major falsifiable position on a prediction that - if their assumptions were correct - could not
possibly fail..... and were 100% completely utterly humiliatingly hilariously
wrong.
Late 1960's: Undaunted by their failure, Keynesians claim that the growth of the 50's and early 60's prove that they have now mastered the business cycle - there will never again need be a recession in the United States of America because they have the power to fine-tune them out via the power of Government expenditures. Arthur Okun (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President) wrote an entire book about how recessions were no longer "necessary" and that booms could now be perpetual thanks to the magic of Keynesianism. Result: one month after the book is published, the US goes into recession. Keynesians attempt to bring their brilliance to bear - Result: the 1970s and
stagflation. CPI rose about 160% from 1965 to 1980. Unemployment rose and remained high. Inflation-adjusted, the DOW fell fully 80% from it's peak (put that in perspective - the giant market crash that we just went through was smaller).
STAGFLATION: under Keynesianism, of course, is
impossible. They had never considered the possibility that it could happen - because their assumptions mean that it can't. Inflation is supposed to improve employment by reducing real wages which remain sticky in inflated dollars, and more money means more growth.... so stagflation can't happen.... and the fact that it does.... well, just ignore the fact that it does, because otherwise the model doesn't work.
want me to go on? 2001 - Paul Krugman writes about the need to lower interest rates in order to stimulate housing? Bush tells us how we can avoid a recession by jump-starting the economy in 2008? Obama tells us we can keep unemployment below 8% in 2009? Obama tells us that unemployment will peak at around 9% if we
don't pas the stimulus?
you know what the definition of "insanity" is, Geo?
It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
