[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
One again, people aren’t reading what I wrote. Nowhere did I say it caused the depression. I said it caused the GREAT Depression, which is a different beast. It shut down foreign trade, as every other country in the west started a tit-for-tat program of high tariffs.
[/QUOTE]
Oh please. Find me a mainstream reference that doesn’t date the start of the Great Depression to the stock market crash.
:rolleyes:
Once AGAIN, you are failing to actually think read what I wrote.
Any history of the Great Depression will emphasize how Smoot-Hawley kneecapped the economy and shut down foreign trade. Moreover, it was the ONLY element which was not present in other depressions, all of which turned around, of their own accord, within a year or three.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
:rolleyes:
Once AGAIN, you are failing to actually think read what I wrote.
Any history of the Great Depression will emphasize how Smoot-Hawley kneecapped the economy and shut down foreign trade. Moreover, it was the ONLY element which was not present in other depressions, all of which turned around, of their own accord, within a year or three.
[/QUOTE]
Roll your fucking eyes at yourself. You said:
You said that the major cause of the Great Depression was the tariff. If you want to say that the depression was caused by other factors, but that it was made worse by the tariff than say that.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Any history of the Great Depression will emphasize how Smoot-Hawley kneecapped the economy and shut down foreign trade. Moreover, it was the ONLY element which was not present in other depressions, all of which turned around, of their own accord, within a year or three.
[/QUOTE]
(my emphasis)
No they didn’t. The Long Depression lasted over two decades.
Let’s not get hung up on semantic nitpicking. There’s “caused the Great Depression” in the sense of “initiated the depression which we now refer to as ‘Great’” and there’s “caused the Great Depression” in the sense of “is the reason we refer to some depression as ‘Great’”. He meant the latter when most people would interpret his words as meaning the former. Whatever. Did anything in his argument depend crucially on his meaning the former? Let it slide and move to more substantial discussion.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Intending no offense, but small improvements to national parks was not really a good use of tax money in my opinion, not during the GD.
[/QUOTE]
I’m curious what you think a better use would be? Tax cuts? The income tax was fairly low back then, and the people in trouble didn’t have that as an issue. Starting a war? That did work.
Building buildings and fixing parks was not even the most “useless” project. There was a writer’s project also. The whole point was to get money into the hands of people who needed it, and also give them useful work to do instead of just paying welfare money. I assume that you wouldn’t prefer a dole, right?
I don’t know if anything would happen if the millions of unemployed, thinking the government didn’t give a crap about them, fell under the sway of one of the several rabble rousers of the time, but I’m just as glad we didn’t find out.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
I don’t know if anything would happen if the millions of unemployed, thinking the government didn’t give a crap about them, fell under the sway of one of the several rabble rousers of the time, but I’m just as glad we didn’t find out.
[/QUOTE]
This is an important point conservatives miss. Some vaguely socialistic solutions were necessary to head off more radical developments (up to and including revolution). The government doing nothing was not a realistic option.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
You are so right. My grandfather was a plumber, and he was able to work again thanks to this. No matter how much conservatives try to tell us the New Deal was a failure, the common people at the time didn’t think so. My mother loved FDR like she loved no other politician, and she was not alone. The fatcats would go hiss Roosevelt at the TransLux, as the New Yorker cartoon had it, but the rest of the country felt that someone actually cared about their problems, unlike Hoover.
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately it is very often the case that average citizens are led astray by demagogues who are offering a hand out. Most historians believe the New Deal ended the Depression, whereas among economists there is significant debate about the matter. (It’s very evenly split between those who think it helped and those who think it did nothing or actually worsened the depression)
I won’t necessarily say there is definitive evidence either way, but it is rare that intentional government waste helps the economy and aside from such emotion-laden anecdotes like the one above I’m not sure why people are inclined to think the New Deal is an exception.
I tend to lean more towards Friedman than Keynes, however I do think Keynes ideas about fiscal policy were at least not demonstrably terrible (i.e. I don’t think a balanced budget should be the be-all-end all of fiscal policy nor do I think it is always disastrous to run a deficit with infrastructure investments.)
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I won’t necessarily say there is definitive evidence either way, but it is rare that intentional government waste helps the economy and aside from such emotion-laden anecdotes like the one above I’m not sure why people are inclined to think the New Deal is an exception.
[/QUOTE]
Why are you calling this form of government spending “waste”? I call it “investment in infrastructure.” From Wikipedia:
This type of spending yields long-term economic benefits. And it beats the hell out of military spending. Now that’s wasteful.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
And it beats the hell out of military spending. Now that’s wasteful.
[/QUOTE]
That depends; if you roll in, beat the hell out of them, take their land/property/women, and then leave (or throw them out/enslave them/kill them all), then military spending is a sound investment. Similarly, military spending to the minimum extent to effectively prevent someone doing the above to you is also a sound investment. (The US’s current war is, of course, neither of the above.)
[QUOTE=Labrador Deceiver]
There are a great many economists (perhaps most) who believe that the New Deal actually did more economic harm than good. Additionally, I think many people would say that the New Deal’s greatest attribute was its ability to instill optimism throughout the US.
[/QUOTE]
If we’re talking WP projects I still drive over some of the rural bridges built.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Unfortunately it is very often the case that average citizens are led astray by demagogues who are offering a hand out. Most historians believe the New Deal ended the Depression, whereas among economists there is significant debate about the matter. (It’s very evenly split between those who think it helped and those who think it did nothing or actually worsened the depression)
I won’t necessarily say there is definitive evidence either way, but it is rare that intentional government waste helps the economy and aside from such emotion-laden anecdotes like the one above I’m not sure why people are inclined to think the New Deal is an exception.
I tend to lean more towards Friedman than Keynes, however I do think Keynes ideas about fiscal policy were at least not demonstrably terrible (i.e. I don’t think a balanced budget should be the be-all-end all of fiscal policy nor do I think it is always disastrous to run a deficit with infrastructure investments.)
[/QUOTE]
Since when is it waste to invest in people, highways, bridges, airports, and lakes. The lake my dad helped dig is in use today for fishing, boating and recreation. I don’t think you know how deep the depression was. I can remember someone saying “if they have no bread, let them eat cake.” I think she lost her head. Yes, it was that bad.
It was WWII that jump started the country out of the depression, the new deal was essential for keeping peace. People without food or hope are very dangerous.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Sounds to me like you’re complaining the New Deal didn’t go far enough!
[/QUOTE]
Get yer ears tested. I said nothing of the sort.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
Why are you calling this form of government spending “waste”? I call it “investment in infrastructure.” From Wikipedia:
[/quote]
Unfortunately that is not a nuanced overview of the WPA. During the New Deal some money was spent on infrastructure improvements that have had long-term benefits for society, some of the money was spent digging artificial lakes which are of questionable value.
Not all infrastructure spending is created equally (see: Ted Stevens, R-Alaska), some bridges just simply shouldn’t be built, some should. Much of the New Deal was government waste, I won’t quibble about what percentage was waste and what wasn’t–but the vast majority of these projects would not have been undertaken if Roosevelt hadn’t been trying to court the votes of the poor by giving a few of them token jobs (which is all that was really happening when you look at the grand scheme of the Depression.)
I’m not going to sit here and say every bridge built, dam built, or et cetera during the New Deal was government “waste”, however I will say that many of them were, and that is the problem with the New Deal. It was essentially a more palatable way to throw a bunch of money at the poor/unemployed–not an immoral act but one which is not economically sound.
The defense budget routinely includes an inordinate amount of waste, certainly true. However there isn’t an option as to whether or not we’re going to fund a military, we are going to fund a military and even if you get rid of all the wasteful military programs we’re still talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in genuine expenses that government has to pay. Providing for a military force is one of the cornerstone responsibilities of the Federal government. However I think it’s questionable how much the Federal government should be involved in infrastructure improvements designed with the sole intent of relieving the effects of a recession.
[QUOTE=lekatt]
Since when is it waste to invest in people, highways, bridges, airports, and lakes. The lake my dad helped dig is in use today for fishing, boating and recreation. I don’t think you know how deep the depression was. I can remember someone saying “if they have no bread, let them eat cake.” I think she lost her head. Yes, it was that bad.
It was WWII that jump started the country out of the depression, the new deal was essential for keeping peace. People without food or hope are very dangerous.
[/QUOTE]
Actually I’ve read about the Depression extensively, and I’ve even read socialist, emotional drivel like the Grapes of Wrath. I didn’t experience the Depression because I wasn’t alive, but the actual statistics about the Depression are available for all to see. It indeed earned the label “Great Depression” however your basic argument is “you don’t know how bad it was, and because it was so bad, that excuses anything.”
I don’t buy into that. I think the New Deal hurt more than it helped, and thus even though it provided your dad with a job and provided future generations with a lake, does not mean on a whole that it was a good thing.
As a tool to “fix” the Depression, I view the New Deal as a failure. The best things to come out of the New Deal were regulations and safety nets which have hopefully insured that we won’t ever see a another great depression (the SEC/FDIC are generally quite good–the SSA is a different matter and has its good and bad sides.)
I’m not opposed to the concept of government funding jobs for the unemployed because I’m some sort of heartless guy that thinks the poor/unemployed should be left to twist in the wind. I’m against it because I think that these sort of programs actually HURT all of society in the long run, that they only help in superficial and temporary ways. This isn’t a perspective most people have because most people don’t worry about where all this money is coming from and the negative consequences of taking that money out of the open market. (I also think the current plan to give everyone a few hundred bucks is a piss-poor way to try and “fix” the economy and it’s extremely disgusting that everyone in both Houses of Congress and in both parties as well as the President is going along with it–about the only value these sort of programs have is they let people believe government is actually fixing the problem)
[QUOTE=lekatt]
dad, not able to get a job anywhere, worked for the WPA digging a lake one shovel full at a time for food scripts.
[/QUOTE]
My Grandfather worked for the WPA in a different state; my Grandmother slept on the back porch with three children and a butcher knife under her pillow.
[QUOTE=pkbites]
:rolleyes: Well…! Someone must have thought it funny back then!
[/QUOTE]
It has a certain appeal given the current administration.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Actually I’ve read about the Depression extensively, and I’ve even read socialist, emotional drivel like the Grapes of Wrath. I didn’t experience the Depression because I wasn’t alive, but the actual statistics about the Depression are available for all to see. It indeed earned the label “Great Depression” however your basic argument is “you don’t know how bad it was, and because it was so bad, that excuses anything.”
I don’t buy into that. I think the New Deal hurt more than it helped, and thus even though it provided your dad with a job and provided future generations with a lake, does not mean on a whole that it was a good thing.
As a tool to “fix” the Depression, I view the New Deal as a failure. The best things to come out of the New Deal were regulations and safety nets which have hopefully insured that we won’t ever see a another great depression (the SEC/FDIC are generally quite good–the SSA is a different matter and has its good and bad sides.)
I’m not opposed to the concept of government funding jobs for the unemployed because I’m some sort of heartless guy that thinks the poor/unemployed should be left to twist in the wind. I’m against it because I think that these sort of programs actually HURT all of society in the long run, that they only help in superficial and temporary ways. This isn’t a perspective most people have because most people don’t worry about where all this money is coming from and the negative consequences of taking that money out of the open market. (I also think the current plan to give everyone a few hundred bucks is a piss-poor way to try and “fix” the economy and it’s extremely disgusting that everyone in both Houses of Congress and in both parties as well as the President is going along with it–about the only value these sort of programs have is they let people believe government is actually fixing the problem)
[/QUOTE]
You are right, you weren’t there. No, the new deal did not fix the economy, but it did keep the peace until it could be fixed. There were rioting in the streets, runs on banks, and smash and grap stealing. You read in the books what other people who weren’t there either wanted to write about it. As Henry Ford said “all history is bunk.” I can’t remember how many times my dad said “if they would report history the way it happened, people could learn from it.” My dad grew up in Berlin with a different world history than he learned when he came to America. It is impossible to separate truth from fiction unless you were there.
I don’t think the few hundred dollars government will pass out will do any good either. What will do good is a morally honest government that would stop the greed of business men that suck the life blood out of the poor. Oil companies with insane profits, subprime loans, junk bonds, lack of decent health care, usuery interest rates to the poor, and the other things that eventually cause the collapse of an economy, the middle class and poor only have so much to give then they collapse. In the depression it was leveraging stock beyond all reasonable expectations causing the markets to shoot up then crash. The government could put a damper on this if they had the guts, most of the time they are part of it.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
One again, people aren’t reading what I wrote. Nowhere did I say it caused the depression. I said it caused the GREAT Depression, which is a different beast. It shut down foreign trade, as every other country in the west started a tit-for-tat program of high tariffs.
Intending no offense, but small improvements to national parks was not really a good use of tax money in my opinion, not during the GD.
There was a recession at the end of WW2. It was shorter, though, because the country was finally opening up, oversease trade was reviving, and the worst excesses of the New Deal were being swept away.
On the subject of Social Security, the problem was that it was unfunded. It essentially relied on a national Ponzi scheme, with new “investors” paying off old ones. The problem is that it only works as long as the new taxpayers are paying in sufficent amounts to cover the old. Hence the worry over the Boomers; too many people drawing money at the same time can break the bank. Plus, the federal government doesn’t lay any cash aside to cover future expenses, so it all has to come out of current taxes.
[/QUOTE]
You almost get it. The retirees of today were taxed their entire working lives to pay for Social Security. If the money had been left for it’s purpose it would have been fine. Pols couldn’t keep their hands off it. When you move all that money into the coffers it creates an economic illusion of stability. They can talk of a debt that really is inaccurate .
The New Deal was not just an economic policy but it also was about compassion. Some of us actually care what happens to the American people who are poor. When it was a large percentage of our population that was hurting we tried to help them. Yes,it helped. Read the stories above.