tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post4672243854139001012..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: Fiscal Policy and the 1938 RecessionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-22375115423149398642008-11-16T00:28:00.000-05:002008-11-16T00:28:00.000-05:00Isn't the Marriner Eccles comment about the poker ...Isn't the Marriner Eccles comment about the poker game appropriate to the current situation? The game is over when the little guys are wiped out. I read that the national debt increased 16 times between 1932 and 1945. (I read that at economichistory.org, a ph.d. thesis) Money went from the wealthy to the non-wealthy, the economy sprung back into shape. I may be wrong because the solution seems so simple. Am I?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-48867039151205820952008-11-11T17:25:00.000-05:002008-11-11T17:25:00.000-05:00I am of the opinion that there is no good definiti...I am of the opinion that there is no good definition of <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Depresion" REL="nofollow">"The Great Depression"</A> other than the very high unemployment rate and the specter of people in bread lines because they could not earn a living. The GDP illustrates its <A HREF="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Gdp20-40.jpg" REL="nofollow">total uselessness</A> over and over again as any indicator of economic health.<BR/><BR/>What seems to be missing in most of the discussion of "The Great Depression" is the reality of <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl" REL="nofollow">"The Dust Bowl"</A>. The neoconomists cite the fact that farm prices continued to erode in spite of the fact that a huge amount of farmland was removed from the economy. And they say it as though this observation had some magic ability to remove the reality and restore the validity of their autistic equations. <BR/><BR/>Reality does not answer to calculus.<BR/><BR/>The people that were at the crux of the unemployment problem were the subsistence farmers and the subsistence communities of shop keepers and even bankers that depended on those local farms. If a man has productive land then a man has what he needs to get along OK, You have a cow and some pigs and chickens and you have the vegetables that you raise yourself and you don't really care so much about the price of wheat or cotton. But when the Dust Bowl destroys all of this you must go to the city to get a job. "The Great Depression" was arrested both by the return of rain and by the war. The war created the demand for lots of "stuff" that called for labor and more labor. But had the "Dust Bowl" not happened the depression also would not have happened. There may have been a depression. But it would not have been "The Great Depression". And when I think about the neoconomists 'bad mouthing' "The New Deal" I just want to scream.<BR/><BR/>The same thing happens in Mexico when NAFTA promotes the consolidation of all the subsistence farms. All those people have to come across the border to find a job. In other countries there is no border to cross; there is no escape. Capitalistic consolidation improves productivity. But governments seem unable to properly distribute the resulting goods/leisure.TheTruckerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10346127768102862741noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-91531930852631074472008-11-10T15:14:00.000-05:002008-11-10T15:14:00.000-05:00"there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly ope..."there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse." PK<BR/><BR/>This fragment is a good example of the progressive thinker lending support to his/her contradictors. <BR/>"Intellectual industry?" There's a misnomer if ever there was one.<BR/>To propagate a misleading or inaccurate idea is to propagandize. There may be some intellectual effort involved in the cration of a propaganda campaign, but the product of the activity is not intellectual. It is still a lie or an attempt to mislead. Krugman and others would do well to call such think tanks as what they are, and not what the pretend to be. Even use of the term "think tank" is significantly misleading, as no thought goes into the production of demonstrably factual ideas within many of these organizations. I prefer the term stink tank in those cases.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com