lefty speak
by HERNANDO!!! • February 9, 2009 • too random • 17 Comments
For consumption … and to take to your water cooler talk ~
Jobs-loss recession data …
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If you haven’t gotten the message of how real and immediate our economic crisis is … check the graph to track how serious this shit is.
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FDR Myth
And if you are falling prey to the repube-progaganda that “government spending isn’t stimulus” … check this data ~
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Note, that the ONLY downturn in GDP growth from the New Deal government spending period was when FDR turned back the spending.
WWII had nothing to do with our turnaround from the Great Depression. Remember that.
WWII’s influence on the US economy … and the advent of the US military-industrial complex is an utterly different argument to be had.
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INFORM AND ACT
Take back the Message … some people just want to warp our minds.
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And remember messages from the past … filibuster hypocrisy.
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Moyers … hottest old sum’bitch ever
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Politics are almost as hot as bike riding. Almost.
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Comments
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Keynesian economics is the only thing that makes sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics Without it, we’re in a downward spiral with no bottom in sight. What good is a tax cut for folks without a job? You can’t eat a tax deduction.
“WWII had nothing to do with our turnaround…” I don’t think many economists believe that, nor does the data not shown in the graph support that. While it is true that New Deal spending grew GDP during FDR’s term (save ’37), the ability to pour the nation’s labor resources into creating the cars, planes, ships, equipment, arms, etc. that WWII demanded was the real end to the depression.
OF course the Marshall Plan (rebuilding a destroyed Europe) further allowed for production, sales, consumption and prosperity in the US. Combine that with a blasting into suburbia, a huge growth in mechanized ag., an explosion of urban convenience consumption (TV’s, dishwashers, cars, etc.) and you have the makings of true “recovery.”
…Economically speaking anyway, in terms of the environment, well the story is rather an inverse relationship to the graphs you show.
But I love ya nonetheless buddy.
jaysus Pedro.
so, we were pre-emptively building our war machine in 1933?
no, the economic explosion post WWII was NOT the turnaround (recovery, if you like) of the great depression. FDR’s New Deal was.
Government spending.
1933 to 1936 had nothing to do with war spending. and THOSE YEARS are the turnaround, recovery, whatever you want to term them. Years of immense government investment in our infrastructure, job creation, education, the ARTS, etc.
like i said in the post, the WWII economic “explosiveness” is another argument entirely. don’t mix the two, blocko.
The GDP goes up at the expense of the enviornment and natural resouces. We’ve got to stop looking at this one marker as an indication of success.
One the other hand, training in shorts during january was nice.
Sorry Michael – gotta go with Pedro here, at least a little…FDR’s first New Deal wasn’t the rounding success it is often considered. His policies were not well received, and the crux of programs were aimed at reforming banking, agriculture, and big business rather than labor. It wasn’t until the 2nd New Deal in 1935 that the stimulus effect of government spending, direct spending, was seen. In the face of the 1937 recession FDR went against expectations by drastically raising spending – not coincidentally the runnup in Government military spending started in 1937 as a precursor to WWII.
In 1929 the Federal Expenditures were only 3% of GDP, whereas ’33-39 that number tripled to a whopping what 12-15%, your graph only shows growth in GDP, not government contribution on a real spending basis.
If by “Keynesian economics is the only thing that makes sense” you mean we should continue to roll and float our exponentially expanding debt until we default – and tell the holders of our debt to F.Off when we do so. Then yes, thats genius and the only way. We ARE in a downward spiral (death spiral financing) BECAUSE of 50 years of ever expanding, leveraged keynesian BULLSHIT that is coming due. As soon as China feels they have their ducks lined up ( which may take long time), they will flip us on our ass so fast your head will spin, ie; Bond Market CRASH. Sorry, keynesian deficits dont matter bullshit will always end in misery.
Pedro
Don’t forget the effect the Montgomery GI bill had after WW2. First nation to send it’s troops to college, giving those that never thought they could afford to go a chance. (ask Bob Dole).
Keynesian um…don’t forget the Iraq war is causing most of this debt. I mean who goes to war and cuts taxes? That is WAY MORE IRRESPONSIBLE then helping America get it’s people employed. It is Ira
Sorry hit post for some reason….
It is Iraq debt (trillions of dollars) which 51% is owed by other nations China and Japan.
The positive of this bill is it will help get us off foreign oil. $750B goes to people that hate us. Cut that in half with domestic production…that’s $350B that stays home and employs people and gives us a sustainable chance to pay down our debt.
I think the dates on the graph speak for themselves and don’t understand how events that happened AFTER the rebound had anything to do with the rebound.
i guess where we disagree, blocko?, is what recovery means. i never said we were building war machine in 1933, but we had begun by 1938. I agree with most economist who disagree with you; the spending and FDR’s new deal grew the economy and improved it. but if you look at such factors and lingering double digit unemployment throughout the 30′s, you’ll see that gov. spending helped, but did not solve the depression.
WWII explosive production and postwar suburbian expansion finished what the new deal started. At’s a fact, jack.
This is where you go a bit astray, Hernando: “WWII had nothing to do with our turnaround from the Great Depression. Remember that.”
To be sure, the conservative argument that the New Deal did *nothing* to end the Depression is inaccurate. The alphabet soup of programs FDR passed in his early term did make a difference. Historians have criticized FDR for the ad-hoc try anything approach. Which is to say, some of his programs worked better than others. But certainly, the vast infusion of government money into the economy pre-World War II did improve the situation. And few without a political ax to grind defend Herbert Hoover’s faith that the invisible hand would provide and that the market would correct itself in the early 1930s. Both historians and economists agree on the importance of FDR’s interventionist stance on the Depression and most conclude that Hoover’s refusal to intervene worsened the economic situation significantly.
But it’s also true that the massive mobilization for World War II did contribute to America’s economic recovery and the boom years of the 1940s and 1950s. And that mobilization began before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In particular, the US began sending supplies across the Atlantic to Britain and an undeclared naval war raged in the North Atlantic. Indeed, many believed at the time that the US would be drawn into the war in the Atlantic long before matters with Japan came to a head.
Anyway, yes, the conservative reading of the New Deal is inconsistent with the historical record. But at the same time, to say that World War II contributed nothing to the economic recovery goes too far. The consensus view is that both the New Deal and the mobilization for World War II contributed to American recovery in the 1940s.
Heh, I feel like I’m taking my PhD exams all over again. Would you like a side order of footnotes with that?
Again, I separate the TURN-AROUND of the Great Depression from the economic explosion of the WWII military-industrial change in our society.
People … please take a look at the seriousness of our economic situation … our JOB-LOSS.
When we talk about what will TURN-AROUND this looming, this probable Depression … the solution, the PROVEN solution is our tax dollars being re-invested in infrastructure, in education, in arts, in energy.
I don’t think i can make more clear the apples and oranges argument that so many are making. WWII had NOTHING to do with turning around the Great Depression. It had everything to do with, as you say Jen, the ‘boom years’ of WWII and beyond. But that is ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
Right now, we are in the midst of a job-loss slide that is every bit as serious and indicative as the Great Depression.
We’re talking real-life here, not academics.
And GDP is EXACTLY the measurement we want to use. We, us Americans, need to create the NEW revolution … the new GREEN ECONOMY that will put us all to work as PRODUCERS, MANUFACTURERS, creators of clean, healthy products that we and the world will want to buy, use, and re-use.
Education, innovation, and commitment to this revolution. It’s what’s for dinner.
Sure, but see, if you deny that World War II contributed to American economic growth, you open yourself up to criticism that distracts from what’s totally right about your argument. Specifically, that government intervention is the right policy in the current situation, and that FDR’s massive New Deal intervention is the correct policy analogy. Which, in my view, it is.
I still say using the GDP is dangerous. It is the value of all goods and services produced, but says nothing about the costs. For instance, A big busy plant producing huge SUV’s, the infrastructure to support them, and many consumers would no doubt increase the GDP, but we know there are costs associated with that.
Some respected “green” thinkers are pushing a switch to the GPI Genuine Progress Indicator. That’s what makes Obama’s paln so cool. Many of his ideas could not only grow the GDP, but they could also lower the hidden costs. It is shortsighted for people to look at gov. spending purely for what will give us the biggest bang for our GDP buck.
Solely trying to grow the GDP will always create busts and booms. In a closed system like the Earth, sustainability is what we should be after and the GPI is better at measuring that.
Nass Natch nailed it, Keynesian economics caused the downward spiral, now what happens when we go to pull on the interest rate lever and find that it’s stuck? (rates can’t go below 0).
The only lever that still works is the Gov spending lever…and it’s being pulled to help us produce shitty cars and save our flawed over leveraged banking system.
Tax breaks only work if people spend the money they saved…only problem is most have already spent it, and will use it to pay down their credit cards…or even worse…save it. Time to buy gold.
Stick to cycling
eat shit