The Victory of Communism!

[jamespowers]

So JP then you know the that what Keynes was saying (basically) was what the private sector and the business sector didn't spend the government should make up and that would help the employment problem in that economy. What FDR did was take that money and put people back to work with work programs FSA WPA etc. The conservatives that were in congress didn't think that gov should be involved and started blocking programs. But as WWII proved once the gov put almost everyone back to work either in the military or with defense contractors the depression was over. The theory worked it just took a war to prove it.

I know exactly what that poor excuse for an economist thought. So you believe thisis a good policy?:
In Keynes's theory, general (macro-level) trends can overwhelm the micro-level behavior of individuals. Instead of the economic process being based on continuous improvements in potential output, as most classical economists had believed from the late 1700s on, Keynes asserted the importance of aggregate demand for goods as the driving factor of the economy, especially in periods of downturn. From this he argued that government policies could be used to promote demand at a macro level, to fight high unemployment and deflation of the sort seen during the 1930s.

A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that there is no strong automatic tendency for output and employment to move toward full employment levels. This, Keynes thought, conflicts with the tenets of classical economics, and those schools, such as supply-side economics or the Austrian School, which assume a general tendency towards equilibrium in a restrained money creation economy. In neoclassical economics, which combines Keynesian macro concepts with a micro foundation, the conditions of General equilibrium allow for price adjustment to achieve this goal. More broadly, Keynes saw this as a general theory, in which resource utilization could be high or low, whereas previous economics focused on the particular case of full utilization."

How is it that it didn't work? Government spending went nuts on all kinds of programs throughout the 30s and we never got "government policies could be used to promote demand at a macro level, to fight high unemployment and deflation of the sort seen during the 1930s." It got worse! By 1937 the economy was in worse shape than before the New Steal! (25% unemployment)
You just admitted that the war ended the depression not the New Steal. Case closed. Who ramped up production and met the demand of an increasing industry? The government? No! It was private industry. The government merely contracted out to private industry with its own money in the form of taxes. If you want to be techical about it, what you actually had in that case was Fascism that worked not Socialism. :eusa_doh: I don't think we want that to be the model of economic theory. Either that or you like the fact that Mussolini made the trains run on time and he too realized that a Fascist military economy brought Italy out of a depression as well. The problem is that that type of economy is based on defeating other nations and risking lives.
No Keynes and Chamberlain had a lot in common aside from both being British. Both didn't realize what they were confronting on paper.

Regards,

J

 

[jamespowers]

JP, Warren Buffett second richest man in the world said he finds it obscene that he is in a lower percentage than his secretary.

I find it obscene being self employed I pay over 30% and big oil got a 14 billion dollar tax break after posting record profits.

Hahahahhahahah! Warren Buffet!? The guy is a hypocrit. He wants you and I to pay more while he socks tons of tax free money away in foundations and off shore accounts to avoid taxes. lol lol lol The next people you quote are going to be the Kennedys right? The same family that paid only $500,000 in taxes when Joe died due to his off shore accounts and trust management of his estate. lol lol lol lol lol Both of these are the do as I say not as I do group. They espouse higher taxes but we all know who is going to end up paying---the middle class. Fortunately over the last decade no one has been listening to people like him and the tax burden has actually increased for the top 10% (5%) while the rest of us have had the tax burden lowered by that same amount.
As for big oil, would you rather they did an across the board reduction of their labor force like Intel? They pay one way or the other. How many people do you employ? You don't pay any more than I do as an average worker. If you add all the state, federal and local together I pay over 50%. :eusa_doh:

Regards,

J

 

[airfrogusmc]

I said it worked in that economy. Roosevelt only got a small portion of what he wanted. He wanted was full employment. Again if he could have got it earlier it would have worked. How do we know this is when the war started everyone went to work the great depression was over. It worked in that economy...

 

[Viola]

I said it worked in that economy. Roosevelt only got a small portion of what he wanted. He wanted was full employment. Again if he could have got it earlier it would have worked. How do we know this is when the war started everyone went to work the great depression was over. It worked in that economy...

Wars ALWAYS kickstart economies, especially when you are trying to manufacture a lot of tanks and stuff in a short amount of time, and FDR's policies did not work without a war. So, uh, what does that say about his policy?

And if his policies were just for the emergency of the Depression, why didn't he put a sunset date in effect?

I'm going to have to go with Jamespowers on this one.

 

[airfrogusmc]

lol lol lol running up record defects, fighting a war and cutting taxes, in record debt to countries like China and we worry about Warren Buffet. I worry about whoever the next guy is in the whitehouse and how he's going to clean up this mess....

 

[MK]

.

What does this have to do with Communism?fftopic:

I would like to ask a straight forward, to the point question:

Is anyone here suggesting that the United States would be better off with a Communist government?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the question of whether the New Deal "worked" or not depends on who you ask. If you talk to people who suffered thru the worst of the Depression living in tar-paper shacks or queueing up in breadlines or roaming the country desperate for work of any kind, you'll get a very different answer than you would if you asked those who *didn't* actually experience the Depression in that way -- it was, by far, the single greatest trauma to face the American people in the 20th Century, and what Roosevelt understood -- where Hoover never did -- was that people were desperate for *action,* meaningful action to restore hope and faith that the system could, in fact, survive. The New Deal was as much a psychological strategy as an economic one, and bare analysis of numbers or debates over fine points of theoretical economics never seem to take the psychological element into account.

But statistics do tell one story. The unemployment rate in the United States went from 24.9 percent in 1933 -- fully a quarter of the entire workforce -- to 14.3 percent in 1937. That spanned the flood tide years of the New Deal and while 14.3 percent is still depressed by any standard, a recovery was clearly underway. The recession of 1938 may well have had much to do to a loss of public confidence that resulted from the reductions in federal spending ordered by FDR in 1937, after political conflicts derailed several of his key programs.

The GNP grew at an average rate of 5.2 percent between 1933 and 1937. I'd call that a success by any standard.

(And to answer MK's question above -- certainly not!)

 

[jamespowers]

I said it worked in that economy. Roosevelt only got a small portion of what he wanted. He wanted was full employment. Again if he could have got it earlier it would have worked. How do we know this is when the war started everyone went to work the great depression was over. It worked in that economy...

Yes, yes and if my uncle had been a woman he would be my aunt.
The fact is that those programs did nothing. So if it worked in that economy (and it didn't)then is it detrimental in this regualr economy? Full employment to Roosevelt was 25% unemployment?! Gee, we have full employment plus now then.
We know the war ended the depression by jumpstarting the manufacturing base. That employed the people and thus gave them money to buy the products they were producing. In this case though, there was rationing. Therefore you had a large pool of money that could go nowhere because the government was sucking up production. Prices soared for tires and other commodities---not quite as bad as in Europe though. That unspent money became part of the investment part of GNP of them time.

Regards,

J

 

[Viola]

Is anyone here suggesting that the United States would be better off with a Communist government?

File me under "heeeeeeck no!" please.

 

[airfrogusmc]

MK, No way...

 

[airfrogusmc]

You guys all keep missing the point. Roosevelt wanted to put everyone back to work. If he would have been able to do it it would have pulled us out of the depression earlier as proven by the fact the war gave us full employment and pulled us out of the depression. As in any war economy not only does the military employee but all the industries that support the military. It worked.....

 

[jamespowers]

But statistics do tell one story. The unemployment rate in the United States went from 24.9 percent in 1933 -- fully a quarter of the entire workforce -- to 14.3 percent in 1937. That spanned the flood tide years of the New Deal and while 14.3 percent is still depressed by any standard, a recovery was clearly underway. The recession of 1938 may well have had much to do to a loss of public confidence that resulted from the reductions in federal spending ordered by FDR in 1937, after political conflicts derailed several of his key programs.

The GNP grew at an average rate of 5.2 percent between 1933 and 1937. I'd call that a success by any standard.

Of course GNP grew by 5.2% based on a huge increase in government spending not consumer spending or investment. Government sucked up all the money. :eusa_doh:
Where did you get those unemployment figures for the Depression? The unemployment rate in Utah was 35.8% and that was only the fifth worst in the country.
If the New Steal was a psychological effect then it cost more than sending the entire nation directly to the doctor.

Regards,

J

 

[Viola]

You guys all keep missing the point. Roosevelt wanted to put everyone back to work. If he would have been able to do it it would have pulled us out of the depression earlier as proven by the fact the war gave us full employment and pulled us out of the depression.

I want to develop a V-8 engine that runs off of my grass clippings and those dang ol' Styrofoam peanuts, and if it had only worked, I'd be a genius.

But it doesn't work, and I'm not.

His policies didn't pull us out of the depression before the war. So what he wanted doesn't matter, the project didn't work. You don't get to take credit as a visionary for projects that don't work.

 

[jamespowers]

You guys all keep missing the point. Roosevelt wanted to put everyone back to work. If he would have been able to do it it would have pulled us out of the depression earlier as proven by the fact the war gave us full employment and pulled us out of the depression. As in any war economy not only does the military employee but all the industries that support the military. It worked.....

Yes but you have to separate the war from the New Steal. The war was in no way part of the New Steal. It was a separate and entirely different animal. The New Steal was not the WAR.
Yes, I know you are just going to say that they didn't spend enough money like Galbreth and every tax and spender now but it didn't work then and it doesn't work now. How old is the war on poverty? Keynesian economics sure failed there.
The US is better off with what we have of capitalism now.

Regards,

J

 

[jamespowers]

I want to develop a V-8 engine that runs off of my grass clippings and those dang ol' Styrofoam peanuts, and if it had only worked, I'd be a genius.

But it doesn't work, and I'm not.

His policies didn't pull us out of the depression before the war. So what he wanted doesn't matter, the project didn't work. You don't get to take credit as a visionary for projects that don't work.

Gee, I want to develop one that runs on water. Do you think I can get government funding and credit for doing the impossible? Maybe I can aaaaaaask Lesko.

Regards,

J

 

[LizzieMaine]

Where did you get those unemployment figures for the Depression? The unemployment rate in Utah was 35.8% and that was only the fifth worst in the country.
If the New Steal was a psychological effect then it cost more than sending the entire nation directly to the doctor.

Well, as distasteful as the medicine might seem, it sure beat the disease. There's a reason why my grandparents, and millions of people like them, kept a picture of FDR on their wall till the day they died, and it wasn't just because they liked his dog.

You'll find a good breakdown on national unemployment stats at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States Yeah, I know, "wikipedia is for hacks," but the stats here are taken from two different cited sources, and I quoted the more conservative of the two. Either way, I think they do tell an important part of the story, one which is all too often obscured by political talking points.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Heres some prime examples of my problem with the new right. Don't agree you get called a commie well I joined the Marines to fight just communism. Condescending remarks about the New Deal which again WORKED and would have worked sooner if Roosevelt would have been able to do what was needed. At least he had a plan and took leadership which is far better than the do nothing approach of Hoover.

 

[geo]

The New Deal and FDR were far from being communist. At times, social reforms are needed, and the fact that they benefit the working classes does not make them communist.

First secretary K, my answer is no, and that was the point of my starting this thread. I was amazed that someone could be proud of the fact that there are no social or economical classes in the US. The statement is untrue, there are classes, but the person believed it to be true, and was proud of the fact.

 

[jamespowers]

Well, as distasteful as the medicine might seem, it sure beat the disease. There's a reason why my grandparents, and millions of people like them, kept a picture of FDR on their wall till the day they died, and it wasn't just because they liked his dog.

You'll find a good breakdown on national unemployment stats at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States Yeah, I know, "wikipedia is for hacks," but the stats here are taken from two different cited sources, and I quoted the more conservative of the two. Either way, I think they do tell an important part of the story, one which is all too often obscured by political talking points.

Ok, so the War worked but the New Steal didn't. That much I can agree on. I don't have my refuting economic figures in front of my but unemployment from 15-25% would still be devastating today.
There are no talking points about how the depression was resolved. War=resolution. I could go further into how FDR's monetary policy actually deepened the depression by restricting the money supply when it should have been increased to mitigate the problem but that would only be a starting point and likely be called a talking point from nobel laureat Milton Friedman.

Regards,

J

 

[jamespowers]

Heres some prime examples of my problem with the new right. Don't agree you get called a commie well I joined the Marines to fight just communism. Condescending remarks about the New Deal which again WORKED and would have worked sooner if Roosevelt would have been able to do what was needed. At least he had a plan and took leadership which is far better than the do nothing approach of Hoover.

Define "worked." So I can understand your argument.

Regards,

J