Farris:What track record?

He’s still right more of the time than you guys.

“Colin”, I keep thinking you are too smart to believe your own Con, but for the way you discredit your own arguments, perhaps you really don’t know what you are talking about.

You spout discredited right wing economic theories as if you were time warped from 1980 and still believed in “voodoo economics.”

It’s funny, even elder Bush I recognized that Hollywood entertainer and Republican salesman Reagan was a nutter on economics.

It was Republican Bush I that labeled Republican Reagan’s magic Ponzi scheme: “Voodoo Economics.”

Reagan’s nonsense theory: ‘cut revenues and revenues will go up!’

Painful, stupid nonsense.

Republican Reagan MORE than doubled the US debt, Reagan understood that massive spending ‘helped’ the economy. Unfortunately he did it for political opportunism.

Reagan increased US debt not to get US out of the Republican created Great Republican Recession but in order to hand tax cuts to the ultra wealthy even while raising taxes on the working class by massive amounts.

REPUBLICAN REAGAN RAISED SPENDING, INCREASED GOVERNMENT DEBT, RAISED TAXES ON THE WORKING CLASS, and all to hand the ultra wealthy tax cuts.

Reagan literally screwed the poor for the rich.

If anyone wants to know about the heart of Republican economic con-artistry the need to read “Two Santa Clause Theory.” “Republican “Economics”"

You cite the welfare capitalism country of Norway as having a higher GDP per capita than US.

Congrats, you just discredited 30 years of Republican economics that claimed that “welfare” was incompatible with “capitalism” by listing a “welfare capitalism” country whose citizenry have HIGHER INCOMES than Americans.

Norway also has lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancy.

And your citation of a welfare capitalist country where citizens earn more money, live longer lives, and have lower infant mortality rates is meant to illustrate ? what? That America should adopt their economic system. Ok, you’ve sold me.

Clearly, by the measure of per capita GDP, life spans, and the health of babies, the welfare capitalist country of fewer than 5 million people beats US on all of those measures.

My point was that some countries have better economic plans than others. Your economic theories just gambled America’s wealth and lost trillions and you are still peddling discredited nonsense.

And for that matter, SaveFarris, for all I know, people are going to stuff mattresses with money. It’s what people did during the Great Depression after the bank runs ruined a lot of people.

And who is going to borrow? Most people aren’t in a position to buy a car or a house or a new refrigerator. So even if the ‘banks’ were theoretically ‘helped’ by government gauranteed deposits, there still aren’t people lining up to go into debt.

And while the littel banks didn’t make the reckless gambles enabled by Republican deregulation of the banks, LARGE BANKS THAT GAMBLED AND LOST REPRESENT THE LARGEST PORTION OF ASSETS IN AMERICA. And those banks literally gambled your deposit away, a deposit that would be GONE if it weren’t for government gaurantees and bailouts.

So, SaveFarris, your first questions offers support for LARGE SCALE GOVERNMENT ACTIVISM once you’ve thought it through.

And this has all been explained repeatedly. Did you miss that day in class SaveFarris or is someones systematically lying to you? Maybe you need better sources of information. Try reading:

Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

Robert Reich
http://robertreich.blogspot.com

Brad DeLong
http://delong.typepad.com

Dean Baker
http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press

And, gee, who all is investing in Stocks? Mutual Funds? and 401(k)s these days?

Most peoples assets dropped by 40% and some by 60%. Stocks DOWN, Mutual Funds DOWN, 401(k)s WAY DOWN, IRAs WAY DOWN.

People’s retirement “cratering” is one of the reasons nobody is “spending” let alone “borrowing.”

People who relied on the “market” for their retirement incomes got sucker punched. Their assets might not recover for a decade, if ever. Some of the elderly’s loss of HALF OF THEIR ‘WEALTH’ may eventually put them on the streets.

See, SaveFarris, your second questions reveals the COMPLETE FAILURE OF THE RIGHT WING’S MAGIC MARKET CULT.

That sunk in to people who were paying attention. Clearly you need to start doing your OWN homework, SaveFarris, and not rely on Limbaugh and Colin the con artist for market advice.

Which part of “no one is spending except for the government” don’t you understand?

But, please, SaveFarris, keep revealing the profound ignorance and deceit of the right wing. Ya’all got US into this current Republican Great Recession, and if the Republicans you helped sucker and lie into your Ponzi scheming fantasy nonsense ever figure that out, the drunken Republican Spending Party will be over.

1. If the paradox of thrift holds then no economy entering a downturn would ever recover without government stimulus. Plainly this is not the case.

2. I don’t even know what this means:

It’s true, if you’re willing to stand by and watch an economy drown, eventually it might recover. It also might mean that the country that used to be strong is then overtaken by one that didn’t share it’s economic fate.

Economic prosperity isn’t a zero sum game. We don’t benefit when other countries fail. In fact, the better others do the better it is for us, since they become better export markets. If other countries become rich and surpass us that’s wonderful. I think for example that Norway has a higher per capita GDP than us. I guess they have “overtaken” us. But who cares?

3. Re” this bit:

Colin is willing to stand around and watch the American economy drown.

No, I am unwilling to watch the government strangle it. The reality is that I have faith in the private sector — that is to say, the American people who work in the productive part of the economy — to make adjustments and retool the economy for future growth. It is a faith in people instead of politicians.

4. Your Spain example is laughable. Spain reduced its huge unemployment during the 1990s by following free market policies. Spain was only a great power when it was raping and pillaging the New World for gold and silver. I, however, am not interested in the prosperity of governments but rather people.

5. Re: Enron, Worldcom, etc. Those two companies were both bankrupted by the free market. Enron no longer exists. This stands in stark contrast to government programs where failure is rewarded with budget increases and largesse. The marketplace punishes failures while government rewards them.

Government may be offering a lifeline to many companies but that doesn’t interest me. I am not a fan of corporate welfare, unlike many on the left as illustrated by their support for bailouts.

6. Newsy is absolutely right that the GOP handed over money to their corporate buddies. This is a profoundly good argument for reducing the scope of government.

7. As for alleged deregulation, the only example of this I can think of is Glass-Steagal, which predated Bush. I also don’t see how it contributed to the financial crisis. On the regulatory front Bush is most notable for piling on additional rules with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley.

And how exactly does one go about “saving money” nowadays?

CDs?
Savings Accounts?
IRAs?

All those help the banking industry, the hardest hit sector of the economy.

Stocks?
Mutual Funds?
401(k)s?

All those help the economy at large.

So while saving in and of itself won’t help things like consumer spending, it *WILL* help the economy.

Or you could take all those savings and have the government tax it, skim their beaurocratic fees off the top, and then “re-invest it”. Of course, then it’s the government deciding who gets the money instead of individuals.

Because politicians know what’s best for you, right?

Uhm, Enron, Worldcom, AIG, Lehmann Brothers, … sorry, but the “inefficiencies and corruption involved in” the deregulated ‘free market’ is what took down the American economy. Again.

Government is the only thing offering a lifeline. Again.

If your economic theories had worked, “Colin”, there wouldn’t have been a global financial meltdown. Clearly your theories failed. Now you’re just selling snake oil.

And as for government procurement corruption, were you paying ANY attention the last 8 years the Republicans have been handing out taxpayer dollars to their corporate cronies? KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater, goodies to Republican’s corporate friends, unbid cost plus contracts, …

The long list of corporate corruption is directly attributable to right wing deregulatory ideology.

And here Colin is, selling the same snake oil that made US sick.

Colin, tell US again how Democratic President FDR’s reduction of the unemployment rate by 60% ‘isn’t anything to write home about.’ Or am I confusing you with one of the othe shapeshifters lurking here.

That’s a verifiable fact. It’s called the paradox of thrift.

During a recession, the individually rational thing to do is to stop spending and save money.

Clearly they’ve been using Colin’s economic remedies.

That assumes that if the money had been left with the taxpayers or lenders to spend that they would have put it to less productive uses than the government. I find that rather difficult to believe given the inefficiencies and corruption involved in government procurement and spending.

You know what we do have? We have unemployment on a downward trajectory and GDP on an upward trajectory. Considering America’s role as exporter prior to the Depression, the lack of demand in the rest of the world made recovery in America exceedingly hard. Recovery required increasing domestic demand to offset reduced global demand for American goods. This was what the New Deal programs did.

You realize that exports currently only account for 9% of GDP right? I have a hard time believing that it was much different in the 1920s.

If these programs did not drive GDP recovery, what was the driver?

In an economic downturn companies and individuals always adjust and shift their allocation of resources. This is what produces recovery. Think about it, if government or some other exogenous factor were needed to pull an economy out of a downturn then all downturns without such intervention would produce an endless downward spiral. Self-evidently this is not the case.

Look at Spain in the 1990s:

http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/files/spain_unemployment_1208.gif

Unemployment declined from about 24% — numbers on par with Great Depression figures — in 1994 to 10% by late 2001. Did government spending drive this? Not really. In fact the Aznar government had an austerity budget that included wage freezes and spending cuts to get in line with the EU requirement for deficits of less than 3% GDP. They also engaged in privatization. In many ways it was the antithesis of the FDR approach.

Now, did Aznar create the recovery? Perhaps not. But this would seem to indicate that government spending is not the magic elixir some claim it to be.

And I think we need to get away from stimulative spending as the only piece of FDR’s policies. The spending was important, but so was an awful lot of other stuff. Things like regulation reform, stabilization of the banking sector and the creation of a social support system that could sustain temporary economic shocks.

You’re right, regulation played a big part. Much of that was bad, as I already showed, and unconstitutional which is why some of the programs were scrapped.

Mostly FDR was just a really, really good president who changed the fabric of how America takes care of its own. FDR’s America was successful for 3/4 of a century, and only after much of what made it great was slowly dismantled by resurgent conservative interests over the past 30 years. And what’s left of it is the only reason this crisis isn’t worse; take away the FDIC and I’d hate to see what kind of retail bank runs we would have seen.

Note I am not saying Republican. I’m saying conservative. The Democrats hopped on the train too, and rode it happily until it crashed into the side of the mountain last year. Just like it did in 1929.

This is a tangent that I don’t have the appetite for a full dissection of but I will make a few points:

1. What FDR programs did conservative interests dismantle? The only one that comes to mind is Glass-Steagal. I have yet to see any kind of explanation of how that contributed to the economic crisis.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

The truth is, however, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act had little if anything to do with the current crisis. In fact, economists on both sides of the political spectrum have suggested that the act has probably made the crisis less severe than it might otherwise have been.

2. If you want to blame right-wingers for the last 30 years I think that is a burden they would happily bear. According to the UN:

http://data.un.org

US per capita GDP in 1981 was $13,314. Now it is $45,057.

Some might see that as something less than a train wreck.

3. I imagine that you think social security was one of FDR’s crowning achievements that rescued the elderly from a life of dining on dog food. There are at least a couple of problems with this. First, social security kicked in when most people were reaching the end of their expected lives, so the benefits reaped weren’t terribly great:

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/04/chart-of-day-retirement-age-v-life.html

Since that time life expectancy has increased, which is why the program — which is similar to a pyramid scheme — has future funding problems. The other problem is the worker-retiree ratio.

Second, while elderly poverty has decreased, this is unsurprising. After all, we are a vastly wealthier country than during the 1930s. It therefore shouldn’t be a surprise that a decline in poverty has occurred. Correlation doesn’t equal causation.

Lastly, social security is a system badly in need of reform. It’s a trainwreck that takes my wages and then gives some portion of them back to me when I retire, assuming the program still exists. Why can’t I have the option of opting out and investing my money as I see fit?

“Colin” even points to a graph that refutes his position and then asserts that it is supporting evidence. Which it is, it is evidence that supports the refutation of “Colin’s” argument.

America’s Gross Domestic Product was going down, down, down during Republican Hoover’s Presidency.

That was BEFORE the Presidency of the Democratic FDR.

FDR was elected and THEN the GDP started going up, up, up.

“Colin” then asserts things which only a minority of crazy right wingers “believe” and asserts that that nonsense is “widely agreed” upon.

Agreed upon by whom? Crazy right wingers? Right wing revisionists?

Citing a graph without attribution that refutes his own argument and linking to “write your own” Wikipedia articles doesn’t “prove” anything other than that “Colin” is either easily conned or assumes that he can con everyone else.

Even “Colins” citation of Morgenthau is corrupted by “Crusty Dems” context of Morgenthau’s concerns about inadequate support of European Jews.

Without the groundwork of Democratic President FDR’s New Deal, America wouldn’t have been able to meet the challenges of World War II.

FDR’s New Deal not only pulled America out of the Great Depression, it readied America to successfully meet the challenges of World War II.

Apparently that offended “Collins” Grandparents.

Which side were they on, “Collin?”

“Colin” even points to a graph that refutes his position and then asserts that it is supporting evidence. Which it is, it is evidence that supports the refutation of “Colin’s” argument.

America’s Gross Domestic Product was going down, down, down during Republican Hoover’s Presidency.

That was BEFORE the Presidency of the Democratic FDR.

FDR was elected and THEN the GDP started going up, up, up.

“Colin” then asserts things which only a minority of crazy right wingers “believe” and asserts that that nonsense is “widely agreed” upon.

Agreed upon by whom? Crazy right wingers? Right wing revisionists?

Citing a graph without attribution that refutes his own argument and linking to “write your own” Wikipedia articles doesn’t “prove” anything other than that “Colin” is either easily conned or assumes that he can con everyone else.

Even “Colins” citation of Morgenthau is corrupted by “Crusty Dems” context of Morgenthau’s concerns about inadequate support of European Jews.

Without the groundwork of Democratic President FDR’s New Deal, America wouldn’t have been able to meet the challenges of World War II.

FDR’s New Deal not only pulled America out of the Great Depression, it readied America to suceessfully meet the challenges of World War II.

Apparently that offended “Collins” Grandparents.

Which side were they on, “Collin?”

We have no data saying what the recovery would have looked like without New Deal programs, nor had it recovered for any length of time before FDR took over. It leveled out during the election year and ticked up as he was taking office.

Looking at the rate of recovery, I doubt it would have been better, so based on GDP I think the best you could argue is that it did nothing extra, but did not retard recovery.

As the government was spending a lot of money – money that was going into infrastructure and manufacturing and to workers who would then spent it – I have a hard time seeing an argument that FDR’s policies did not accelerate the growth of GDP.

The task is to show that unemployment declined by more than what otherwise would have been the case absent the New Deal.

Yep, and your task is to show that GDP would have increased as quickly as would have been the case absent the New Deal.

You know what we do have? We have unemployment on a downward trajectory and GDP on an upward trajectory. Considering America’s role as exporter prior to the Depression, the lack of demand in the rest of the world made recovery in America exceedingly hard. Recovery required increasing domestic demand to offset reduced global demand for American goods. This was what the New Deal programs did.

If these programs did not drive GDP recovery, what was the driver?

So I guess you approve of Bush’s wartime spending as a means of boosting the economy right?

No bid contracts to corporate interests operating overseas are not the same thing as massively increased domestic manufacturing. All spending is not created equal.

And I think we need to get away from stimulative spending as the only piece of FDR’s policies. The spending was important, but so was an awful lot of other stuff. Things like regulation reform, stabilization of the banking sector and the creation of a social support system that could sustain temporary economic shocks.

Mostly FDR was just a really, really good president who changed the fabric of how America takes care of its own. FDR’s America was successful for 3/4 of a century, and only after much of what made it great was slowly dismantled by resurgent conservative interests over the past 30 years. And what’s left of it is the only reason this crisis isn’t worse; take away the FDIC and I’d hate to see what kind of retail bank runs we would have seen.

Note I am not saying Republican. I’m saying conservative. The Democrats hopped on the train too, and rode it happily until it crashed into the side of the mountain last year. Just like it did in 1929.

Nothing can compare with the Great Depression, but we do the best we can.

The Morgenthau quote is interesting, but curiously incomplete. Morgenthau was never a fan of the New Deal, and in the late 30’s became a harsh critic of his own administration for not taking more aggressive action to help Jews emigrate from Europe. As the only Jew in FDR’s cabinet, he was quite offended (and rightly so) that FDR didn’t take more aggressive action.

Interesting, but the fact remains that as Treasury Secretary he was basically calling his own policies a failure.

All said, I don’t think anyone here claims the New Deal was the only, or even most important, component of FDR’s economic recovery plan. The first step was simply reversing the horrible policies of his predecessor (ended the deflationary cycle was a huge improvement, lowering effective interest rates was also important). Where conservatives error greatly in their assessment of the New Deal is where they ignore the effect of the policy on 1) Minimizing/alleviating suffering of the poor (never a strong point of conservatives) 2) Improving morale (we wouldn’t want a “nation of economic whiners”) and 3) Building infrastructure (which came in quite handy for WWII).

And the left can’t seem to grasp that the New Deal was hardly an unqualified success. Your first point is a baseless attack so I will ignore it. You are on more solid ground with your second. As for the third, I am unsure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration#Projects_funded

With regard to your chart, go back and check GDP in the chart I posted in response to Eric. Unemployment is a lagging indicator. GDP is a better measure, and it started to recover before FDR did anything.

When deficit spending started back up, unemployment started going back down.

Uh-huh:

http://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/posts/Fishchart.jpg

All of this happened before World War II (which itself was a BIG government spending spree that INCREASED THE VALIDATION of the economic model of Keynsian economics.)

So I guess you approve of Bush’s wartime spending as a means of boosting the economy right?

“Colin,” you are regurgitating right wing revisionism. Maybe you are a sucker enough to believe, but your being a fool doesn’t make your fictions ‘true.’

Which, while it makes you a perfect leader/deceiver for the Republican right wing it also puts you in the category of “CON ARTIST,” COLIN.

I see you have been confusing paint chips with potato chips again. I hate to be the person that gets cornered by you at a party.

Unemployment went down from 25% to 10% in about 8 years. 10% unemployment is nothing to brag about.

Well progress strikes me as necessary but insufficient to determine success. After all, recovery and progress follows every recession we’ve ever had. The notion that unemployment would have remained at a permanent 25% plateau is rather implausible.

The fact remains that it took about 8 years to get unemployment down to 10%.

The task is to show that unemployment declined by more than what otherwise would have been the case absent the New Deal.

While we are looking at graphs we should also consider this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oKWxWOEilyQ/STQBv-aP7mI/AAAAAAAAALI/IpRp4SsZJ24/s1600-h/Depression.png

This is an examination of GDP rather than unemployment, which is more useful since unemployment is a lagging indicator. GDP had already started to recover when FDR took office.

We also know that some of the New Deal programs plainly did not help progress. For example the National Industrial Recovery Act, which set things like maximum hours that could be worked and I believe even minimum prices to combat deflation. As wikipedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Industrial_Recovery_Act#Impact

It is widely agreed that the NIRA was a failure as public policy. As noted above, even by early 1935 there was nearly a consensus in Congress that the industry codes were not working and that the economic effects of the public works provisions would not be felt for many years. But why the NIRA failed is the subject of dispute.

A key criticism of the Act at the time as well as more recently is that the NIRA endorsed monopolies, with the attendant economic problems associated with that type of market failure. Even the National Recovery Review Board, established by President Roosevelt in April 1935 to review the performance of the NRA, concluded that the Act hindered economic growth by promoting cartels and monopolies.

I don’t doubt that many people you know think the New Deal was a success. Its implementation correlated with recovery. Correlation, however, does not mean causation. And if you want to swap anecdotes both sets of my grandparents did not approve of the New Deal.

But let’s set all of that aside and say that the New Deal was a success. The context for this that the New Deal justifies Obama’s spending explosion. But the New Deal, while engaging in sizable spending, did not run much of a deficit, making up the difference with increased tax revenue:

http://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/posts/Fishchart.jpg

Either way, I don’t think they’re comparable recessions just because they were both recessions. They don’t resemble each other enough to draw as broad a conclusion as you’re suggesting.

No, they don’t. But then again nothing can compare with the Great Depression.

Right. Because the recession of 1920-21 was very similar to the great depression. In what way? This is just abject stupidity, FDR took office 3 years after the great depression, if it were a simple recession, it would’ve been over in time for Hoover to be re-elected.

The Morgenthau quote is interesting, but curiously incomplete. Morgenthau was never a fan of the New Deal, and in the late 30’s became a harsh critic of his own administration for not taking more aggressive action to help Jews emigrate from Europe. As the only Jew in FDR’s cabinet, he was quite offended (and rightly so) that FDR didn’t take more aggressive action.

All said, I don’t think anyone here claims the New Deal was the only, or even most important, component of FDR’s economic recovery plan. The first step was simply reversing the horrible policies of his predecessor (ended the deflationary cycle was a huge improvement, lowering effective interest rates was also important). Where conservatives error greatly in their assessment of the New Deal is where they ignore the effect of the policy on 1) Minimizing/alleviating suffering of the poor (never a strong point of conservatives) 2) Improving morale (we wouldn’t want a “nation of economic whiners”) and 3) Building infrastructure (which came in quite handy for WWII).

with my conservative wrath.