Krugman: This Is 1938 All Over Again, And We Need Something Like WWII To Save Us

[Voegelin]

Krugman: This Is 1938 All Over Again, And We Need Something Like WWII To Save Us

 

[Harpuia]

I heard shades of 1929 in 2008 when Bush was in office.

We made it from 1929 to 1938 in two years?

Sweet. So we might make it to the 23rd century in my lifetime after all!

 

[lemmings]

"Krugman doesn't want us to declare war on anyone, he just wants us to do something big."

Kind of like how many Democrats, myself included, have supported Government funding for large scale projects that will benefit this country in the long term?

 

[Harpuia]

"Krugman doesn't want us to declare war on anyone, he just wants us to do something big."

Kind of like how many Democrats, myself included, have supported Government funding for large scale projects that will benefit this country in the long term?

A new Hoover Dam?

We'll call it the Bush Dam or something.

 

[EdwinWillers]

I heard shades of 1929 in 2008 when Bush was in office.

We made it from 1929 to 1938 in two years?

Sweet. So we might make it to the 23rd century in my lifetime after all!

It has something to do with the new math.

Billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to douse the flames of the government's repeated mistakes has also doused their ability add 2 + 2 and get anything other than tax increases and stimulus spending.

"Salvation" for those who do not believe in salvation must necessarily come in the form of some sort of disaster, catastrophe, "crisis" - or even it seems, world war.

They think spending money will cover the errors of their thinking.
They think disasters and crises will cover the errors of their spending.
...and they think we're stupid?

 

[Wolseley]

I heard shades of 1929 in 2008 when Bush was in office.

We made it from 1929 to 1938 in two years?

Sweet. So we might make it to the 23rd century in my lifetime after all!

I personally think it's closer to 1860 than 1938.

And we all know what happened in 1861, don't we?

 

[EdwinWillers]

Krugman: This Is 1938 All Over Again, And We Need Something Like WWII To Save Us

From his op-ed in the New York Times:

From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today.

Had anyone proposed spending even a fraction that much before the war, people would have said the same things they’re saying today. They would have warned about crushing debt and runaway inflation. They would also have said, rightly, that the Depression was in large part caused by excess debt — and then have declared that it was impossible to fix this problem by issuing even more debt.

But guess what? Deficit spending created an economic boom — and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity.

...and leftists think Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et. al. are dangerous people?

This idiot's proposing a world war so they can increase their deficit spending even more - because it was deficit spending on the war that created our economic boom. And because rational people then and now oppose deficit spending - the only solution to the economy is world war.

Heaven help us - cuz our government and ruling elite certainly won't.

 

[kermit]

From his op-ed in the New York Times: ...and leftists think Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et. al. are dangerous people?

This idiot's proposing a world war so they can increase their deficit spending even more - because it was deficit spending on the war that created our economic boom. And because rational people then and now oppose deficit spending - the only solution to the economy is world war.

Heaven help us - cuz our government and ruling elite certainly won't.

He is not proposing war. He is proposing an economic equivilent to WWII.

You make it seem that Krugman is being radical, but the truth is that is, and has been, proposing things that we know to have worked in the past. We know that massive deficit spending brought us out of depression, we know that high top marginal tax rates saw the largest economic booms in our history, and we know that relatively low disparity of wealth creates stabily. Yet it's your side that opposes all the things we know to have worked... you guys are the radicals.

 

[Maynard Keenan]

World War Two was a massive government takeover and mobilization of the economy. Conservatives love to point to WW2 saving us from the depression. So... government should hire people and direct the economy as it sees fit? I could get behind a massive, government run and funded nationwide project to restore infrastructure, build as much wind, solar, and nuclear power plants as we can, and modernize buildings to increase energy efficiency.

 

[tulc]

I personally think it's closer to 1860 than 1938.

And we all know what happened in 1861, don't we?

The Republican party split the Nation because they thought they knew better then anyone else what it meant to be an American?
tulc(right?)

 

[Wolseley]

The Republican party split the Nation because they thought they knew better then anyone else what it meant to be an American?
tulc(right?)

I was thinking of civil war due to completely polarized and uncompromising camps.

1861: Abolitionists vs. slaveholders

2010: Radical leftists vs. extreme conservatives

 

[JustMeSee]

I don't know what it will take, but I pray we don't get into anymore wars.

I hear conflicting views on how we can restore jobs and the economy. I don't know who to trust.

 

[tulc]

I was thinking of civil war due to completely polarized and uncompromising camps.

1861: Abolitionists vs. slaveholders

2010: Radical leftists vs. extreme conservatives

Yeah the Republicans who knew better then anyone what it meant to be an American and those who disagreed with them.
tulc(wonders if you mean the Republicans are going to try and split the Nation again?)

 

[TemperateSeaIsland]

We can have it on the American continent this time, then he can see how good a stimulus it is.

 

[Sketcher]

This was probably on Bush's mind in 2002 and 2003, to minimize the economic impact of 9/11.

I was thinking of civil war due to completely polarized and uncompromising camps.

1861: Abolitionists vs. slaveholders

2010: Radical leftists vs. extreme conservatives

That won't happen. Besides, the conservatives are the ones with guns. It wouldn't be a fair fight.

 

[Wolseley]

I don't know what it will take, but I pray we don't get into anymore wars.

"There shall be wars, and rumors of wars." Matthew 24:6.

I hear conflicting views on how we can restore jobs and the economy. I don't know who to trust.

Don't trust any of them. Trust yourself. That's how this country was built: complete self-reliance.

That won't happen.

Sure. That's what they said in Germany in 1930.

Besides, the conservatives are the ones with guns. It wouldn't be a fair fight.

I can't disagree with you there. I wonder who the liberals would have as an elite commando unit---Code Pink? The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Ack-Loo lawyers?

 

[Harpuia]

I was thinking of civil war due to completely polarized and uncompromising camps.

1861: Abolitionists vs. slaveholders

2010: Radical leftists vs. extreme conservatives

I'm no history buff, and the only history I've researched beyond high school was that of World War II. However, from what I have heard from the Civil War, wasn't there something else beyond the Confederates wanting slavery that they moaned about at the time?

And yes, I first learned about this from a PUBLIC high school, no less.

 

[tulc]

"There shall be wars, and rumors of wars." Matthew 24:6.

yeah, that's one of the good Scriptures, I'm curious where it said Christians would be the ones starting them to enforce their beliefs?

Don't trust any of them. Trust yourself. That's how this country was built: complete self-reliance.

uhmmm...no, that's a myth people started to sell books and movies with. The Nation was actually built on people working together and helping each other.

Sure. That's what they said in Germany in 1930.

uhmmm...so?

I can't disagree with you there. I wonder who the liberals would have as an elite commando unit---Code Pink? The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Ack-Loo lawyers?

Cute, that's what the Southerners said about the North...right up till they got their heads handed to them.
tulc(thinks it's always a mistake to try and fight your own strawmen to show how tough you are)

 

[HerbieHeadley]

The white flag of Keynesian economics has been raised….again

Who knew? Imagine that…

Is Krugman, the unabashed Keynesian, trying to save some face?

 

[mcswan]

From his op-ed in the New York Times: ...and leftists think Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et. al. are dangerous people?

This idiot's proposing a world war so they can increase their deficit spending even more - because it was deficit spending on the war that created our economic boom. And because rational people then and now oppose deficit spending - the only solution to the economy is world war.

Heaven help us - cuz our government and ruling elite certainly won't.

Krugman seems determined to ignore the context of America's post-WWII economic success in order to give the credit to deficit spending. He could not be more wrong.

During WWII most of the infrastructure of the industrial nations, other than the United States had been destroyed. In 1945 and 1946 the GNP of the United States represented about half the entire global GNP. While deficit spending did finance war production, it was global demand for rebuilding infrastructure, and pent up consumer demand, that drove the US economy - the world's only truly functioning economy - to unprecedented prosperity, not the deficit spending.

I don't know about you, but I really don't think we want to go through several years of meeting almost none of our consumer demands, while financing a major arms build up, and firebombing Tokyo and Berlin to rubble again, in order to rev up our economy.

Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s: Publications: The Independent Institute

ABSTRACT: Relying on standard measures of macroeconomic performance, historians and economists believe that “war prosperity” prevailed in the United States during World War II. This belief is ill-founded, because it does not recognize that the United States had a command economy during the war. From 1942 to 1946 some macroeconomic performance measures are statistically inaccurate; others are conceptually inappropriate. A better grounded interpretation is that during the war the economy was a huge arsenal in which the well-being of consumers deteriorated. After the war genuine prosperity returned for the first time since 1929.
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• “War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.”
  —Ludwig von Mises