All Keynesian theory does is expand socialism. Reagan was the first to roll back Keynes and put in some Hayekian theory into practice. It brought us 25 years of unparalleled prosperity.
Let's not forget that Reaganomics also brought us 3 recessions (one quickly becoming a depression), huge deficits and continually growing difference between the rich and the middle class.
The funny thing about all of the talk about socialism (which we aren't) is that what we were heading towards, and kind of had was a Plutocracy, or rule by the rich.
Frankly, while many of us will be well off thru much of our lives, it's very unlikely that any of us will ever be in the top 5%. I would rather that money be "spread around" down, rather than up and just be happy to eat table scraps that slosh out of the trickledown cup.
All Keynesian theory does is expand socialism. Reagan was the first to roll back Keynes and put in some Hayekian theory into practice. It brought us 25 years of unparalleled prosperity.
Reagan spent government money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Had it not been for GW Bush, he would have been the President who increased our nation debt load the most.
People like to credit that spending with the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. We will likely never know the answer to that one.
The Great Depression was an extension of the War effort in Europe. We mobilized man power inside of the country rather than directing it at a foriegn enemy.
Reagan out spent the Russians militarially. It was very deliberate.
Man power needs to be busy in order to have an economy. We detest welfare but think nothing about propping up corporations who contribute very little to the common good. The banking industry comes immediately to mind.
Trading dollars on make work projects during the Depression did very little for us. It was the redirection of the war effort that brought us prosperity again.
We do need to look outside of our borders for future economic growth. I think all of history shows us that. War brings spoils from foriegn lands.
So I think the New Deal was just a holding pattern trying to keep protectionism alive in a resource rich continent. It just wasn't enough to give people incentive for more.
We do need to look outside of our borders for future economic growth. I think all of history shows us that. War brings spoils from foriegn lands.
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You're right. That worked pretty good for us in both Iraq wars and in Vietnam. Gave us tons of spoils and helped alot with our economy.
Oh wait, there were recessions right after all three of those, weren't there? And what sort of spoils did we get from those wars exactly?
If there's one thing that the Bleeding hearts were wrong about it's that Iraq II wasn't blood for oil. We certainly didn't get better oil prices as a result of our occupation there.
We do have better oil prices. Viet Nam opened up a new world for the United States. The French took a shot, and now we seem to be there all over the place.
We do have better oil prices. Viet Nam opened up a new world for the United States. The French took a shot, and now we seem to be there all over the place.
What decade are you living in exactly?
Average price of a barrel in 2001: $23 (inflation adjusted $27.59)
Average price of a barrel in 2008: $99.65
Current price right now: $37.67
Average gas price adjusted for inflation in 2001: about 1.68 a gallon
Average gas price today: a little over $2 a gallon.
So yeah, our oil prices are a hell of alot better than they were a year ago. But not better than when the war started and especially not for the last 6 years while the war has been going on.
So yeah, our oil prices are a hell of alot better than they were a year ago. But not better than when the war started and especially not for the last 6 years while the war has been going on.
For all the comparison with historical values, there isn't an way to adjust the data for all the other changes that occured in the world. Demand from China, India, the Middle East, etc. has all increased and technology has driven down margins as the amount of world-wide competition has gone up. To attribute changes to one particular event or decision is simplistic.
I don't think that the war was the cause of the increase in gas prices. It had a great deal to do with demand from other countries in addition to unregulated trading. Prices came down after a provision in the farm bill over the summer didn't allow blind trading of oil futures anymore.
I was mostly speaking incredulously at David's comment that oil prices are so much better right now. Sure. Better than they were 6 months ago.
I always like to ask how people figure we lost the Viet Nam war.
As a historical fact there is no winning a ground war with the Chinese. There are just too many people in the service of that country to be able to win a war. We left a no win situation, but we still have a huge presence in Viet Nam. As a matter of fact we are trading partners with China also.
You brought up blood for oil. We now have a direct presence in Iraq and are talking with Iran. In my opinion the run up in oil prices was based on speculation of future consumption. Our war effort had nothing to do with that run up in pricing.
Iraq is a war we won by the standards of war against a tyrant, as we call Hussien. We killed his sons and put them on display. We captured him, put him on trial, and hanged him. If the definition of a win is killing the king we did that and then some.
War makes economic sense. We manufacture durable goods that are ultimately lost or destroyed. It's an endless chain of economic growth. War employs millions of people, It keeps them busy and opens up endless possibilities of further economic expansion.
I think the new deal was waiting for war. It was keeping people busy. The United States was in a nationalistic, protectionist mode and there were many idled hands. We had conquered this country and gone back to Europe.
We wanted to come home and hold out for a prosperity that never came. There was no reason for prosperity. There was no incentive. There were no new worlds to conquer. It's just human nature.
I always like to ask how people figure we lost the Viet Nam war.
As a historical fact there is no winning a ground war with the Chinese. There are just too many people in the service of that country to be able to win a war. We left a no win situation, but we still have a huge presence in Viet Nam. As a matter of fact we are trading partners with China also..
I think you're confusing Vietnam with Korea. It was fairly recent history where we normalized relations with Vietnam. Like I believe in the last 5 years?
One of the biggest reasons we lost in Vietnam was a fundamental misunderstanding of the Vietnamese people and culture. LIke for instance the fact that they hated the Chinese about as much as they hated us. Lack of understanding of culture of Iraq is a large reason why things have gone so poorly there.
You should watch Fog of War. Great documentary about Robert McNamara. He talks pretty in depth about Vietnam and what many of the failures there were.
Iraq is a war we won by the standards of war against a tyrant, as we call Hussien. We killed his sons and put them on display. We captured him, put him on trial, and hanged him. If the definition of a win is killing the king we did that and then some. .
If that's the way you want to define winning, then awesome. Why are we still there then fighting if we already won? We certainly didn't have to have ongoing combat operations in Germany or Japan, even though we maintained a presence in those countries
Mostly I brought up the blood for oil thing to make a point about what you said. Which was that war brings spoils from foriegn lands. My point was, what spoils did we get from Vietnam, or either Iraq war? I made the comment about blood for oil to be sarcastic. What spoils exactly did we get from any of those wars? And were the spoils enough to offset the cost of the war? I would say no.
War makes economic sense. We manufacture durable goods that are ultimately lost or destroyed. It's an endless chain of economic growth. War employs millions of people, It keeps them busy and opens up endless possibilities of further economic expansion. .
OK, durable goods are things that are NOT lost or destroyed or consumed right away, but rather can be used for several years. Like a refrigerator. Or a car. Therefore, war machines, ammo, bombs, etc. are NOT durable goods.
War is good short term for an economy because it produces much manufacturing and what not. It's unsustainable economic growth though, because you are shipping all of your resources (manpower, goods, money, food, etc) to another country. If there are no "spoils", then you end up having alot of production economically with nothing to show for it in the end. Because you are not creating durable goods that can the
WWII was tough on our economy. There was rationing. MOney was scarce. THey had to market war bonds like crazy to pay for it and everyone sacrificed because it was the right thing to do morally we thought as a country.
The money for the war machine has to come from somewhere. Think of it this way. I make guitars and you like to buy them from me and then smash them. I'm more than happy to continue to sell you guitars that you can then smash as much as you like.
The problem here is, that your job is to smash guitars. You don't play them, or it's not part of some wierd performance art. You are just paid to smash them.
So who pays that salary for you smashing the guitars? All of your friends do. So they have to sacrifice what they have in order to buy my guitars so you can spend all day smashing them. Unless you were smashing them over someone's head and then stealing their money, there's no economic growth in a guitar smashing career.
So once people are done paying you to smash guitars, there's no demand for guitars to smash anymore and I lay off my work force because there's no demand anymore.
So again, how did either Iraq wars make our economy better? What spoils did we get from there?
Our principle objective in fighting the Vietnam war was to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. In that sense, we did succeed ("win").
Likewise, our principle objective was to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We accomplished that. So in that sense, we did succeed ("win") there, too.
Both wars share some common traits - both lacked an understanding of the ramifications of war, the culture of the enemy, and an exit strategy. As a result they're usually viewed as "losing" wars.
We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.
But whatever. That dude probably didn't know what he was talking about.
All Keynesian theory does is expand socialism. Reagan was the first to roll back Keynes and put in some Hayekian theory into practice. It brought us 25 years of unparalleled prosperity.
I don't know if you've heard of this, but there are other news sources outside of Fox News.
Let's all be honest for a moment. Reagan was immensely popular when he left office, but his legacy is not looking very sparkling at the moment. In fact, I would now say he was likely one of the 10 worst presidents we've had. I guess he just looks good compared to the most recent GOP president. Although, to be fair, we've had kind of crappy presidents for most of the last 40 years or so.
FWIW, trickle down economics had nothing to do with the wealth in the 90s. A lot of that wealth was imaginary (as witnessed when the bubble burst), and the rest was due to a temporary event of massively increasing debt and cheap goods from developing nations. Reagan's policy directly resulted in this current crash, as well as the dotcom crash. Add in the regional impact he has had in the middle east due to the Iran-Contra affair, and don't forget the terribly expensive and ultimately pointless war on drugs.
The only major spot on his resume that appears to be mostly unblemished is the break up of the Soviet Union. Without even discussing whether or not that has been worth it, I will point out that the military mode of operations (massive spending on fighter jets and all-out-war weapons) has actually been a major blight on our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This may be a red herring but, it's interesting to me that the New Deal started at the same time Prohibition ended. Could Prohibition have been like our current "War on Drugs?" Prohibition certainly must have been a huge deployment of man power. There must have also been a Black Market economy to go along with that. All in all I'm sure Prohibition kept a lot of the work force busy. When that ended a lot of people lost jobs.
Let's return to Vietnam. All we could ever hope for in Vietnam was to hold out long enough to make a peace.
That peace never came and we call that a loss. We are however well liked in South, and in many cases North Vietnam. We attempted to hold off the Chinese, and you are very correct the Chinese are hated in Vietnam. Any occupier is hated by the occupied. The Chinese are now the occupiers of Vietnam and we are a fading memory of what could have been.
As far as Iraq, there are tribal factions who have no allegiance to a central power. The idea that Saddam Hussein was in power is only in the minds of Americans. Only Allah has the power in Iraq. it is his will that the people follow. There are no weapons that can fight that ideology. So if you are talking about winning there it will only be by submitting to the will of Allah and that may prove difficult.
Winning or losing makes no difference however to the fact war is good for economic growth.
The New Deal was a redirection of a war effort. No matter how you look at it World War One was never finished. We kicked the Kaiser back to Germany, but it was the failings of the monarchies that were the underlying cause of the war. We even welcomed the grass roots rise of Hitler as an opposing force by the people.
As long as the Czar of Russia was in power war was inevitable. Our participation, to protect our interests, was set in stone.
How any of this relates to today's stimulus package was best summed up at today's G7 meeting. Protectionism has no place in today's economy. If one country fails we all fail. I am paraphrasing. A New Deal today would have to be global in concept. It's a new type of World War.
A quote i like from the Vietnam era by an economist was "in the future wars will be fought economically."
The war in Vietnam was similar, I think, to the Boer war. Just a side-show, in preparation for the bigger operation in the years ahead.
I believe the best analogy in history I can think of right now is 1930. People know things are getting bad, but it hasn't really hit home yet. Remember that just as the depression was drawing to a close we wound up in WWII in 1941. That really makes me stop and think considering how my 4 year old son will be a teen-ager 10 years from now. I have no idea what terrible war will arise that calls out for the blood of the nation's youth, but I think that the odds of such an event is non-trivial.
The New Deal arose at the bottom of a great generational economic downturn, and it is significant that it was enacted <i>after</i> the economy had reached a bottom in 1932.
Socialisim waxes and wanes with the mood of society. When every is feeling happy and "bullish", socialism becomes marginalized. When everone is bearish, socialism reigns supreme.
The Boer Wars were a fight for territorial control by colonists.
That is the whole point here that I would like to make. Our economies have centered around war since the beginning of time. Governments pump in money for weapons, troop deployment, bases, air craft, the navy, technology, and biological research.
In the end what do we get?
There are no more colonies. Every inch of dirt on the planet has been conquered. The New Deal of the 1930s was a protectionist disaster.
Global cooperation is the only thing that we can do from now on. In my opinion the stimulus package will give the United States something to do while we address the larger international issues that need to be dealt with.
If anything was naive it was John McCain insisting he could win a war anywhere. The only way to win is to feed the people of that country and have them like us for the generousity. For the same amount of money we spend on killing people or threatening to kill people we can win minds and bodies.
That is the whole point here that I would like to make. Our economies have centered around war since the beginning of time.
Not quite. Between the beginning of agriculture and about 1850, all economies have been centered around raising and harvesting crops. Just over 100 years ago, the vast majority of people worked as farmers or farm hands.
That is the whole point here that I would like to make. Our economies have centered around war since the beginning of time.
Not quite. Between the beginning of agriculture and about 1850, all economies have been centered around raising and harvesting crops. Just over 100 years ago, the vast majority of people worked as farmers or farm hands.
I think it's an interesting statement, but like Rose said, most economies have been based on people getting by and living life. Food, shelter and clothing. Necessities for survival.
There has always been drought, famine, and locusts. If every one could just stay in one place and till the soil that would be one thing. Things change.
If you have crops they need to be stored, distributed, and protected. You can grow a certain type of crop, but it's hard to rotate all crops in one geographic loacation. Trade was the first economic force and I think kind of trumps agriculture.
All in all there was a point where the masons need to make stronger fortresses, because there were elements in the world that took the crops rather than grow them. Finanlly if you are saying that the industrial revolution changed our agri society into a manufacturing based economy, then the New Deal was for you.
War is a constant. Out of need or greed people just kill each other. It's a sad commentary, but it has to change.
This thread was about the New Deal. It was a period of waiting for war. It was a redirection of a work force in a protectionist, nationalistic endevour that was disasterous economically.
If there is a comparison between the New Deal and today's Stimulus Package it should be that today we work for the global economy. We are all in this together. There is no more hiding behind your own borders.
I mentioned earlier that there is no winning a ground war with China. China has never been conquered. It's because of thier numbers. There are 1.3 billion people in China. If they chose to they could march across Europe. There is nothing that could be done about it. Speculation is that they wouldn't even need to be armed.
For that matter 1 million illegal immigrants cross our border from Mexico every year. If they ever organized, met at one place at one time, they could lock arms and march into the United States.
The stimulus package had better have something for the problems we have globally today. My hope is that Obama starts talking about getting the auto industry out of the gas combustion engine business. Oil and coal are old, dead technologies that we need to get rid of. Nuclear didn't work, but there are millions of technological advances that come out every day that can change things for the better.
Those four million jobs Obama wants to create need to have a positive global impact. That's the New Deal.
There has always been drought, famine, and locusts. If every one could just stay in one place and till the soil that would be one thing. Things change.
If you have crops they need to be stored, distributed, and protected. You can grow a certain type of crop, but it's hard to rotate all crops in one geographic loacation. Trade was the first economic force and I think kind of trumps agriculture.
I mentioned earlier that there is no winning a ground war with China. China has never been conquered. It's because of thier numbers. There are 1.3 billion people in China. If they chose to they could march across Europe. There is nothing that could be done about it. Speculation is that they wouldn't even need to be armed.
For that matter 1 million illegal immigrants cross our border from Mexico every year. If they ever organized, met at one place at one time, they could lock arms and march into the United States.
Losh, you're rambling and off point again. Where to begin...let's see, before trade or agriculture there was hunting and gathering. But your original point had been about war being the be-all-end-all of economic activity. We're only discussing agriculture as a counterpoint to that historically insane argument you laid forth.
About China...WTF? No, wrong, wrong. One million, or even one billion unarmed people marching anywhere would be trivial for any modern military to stop if they were willing to kill them all. This has been true since roughly the start of the 20th century when machine guns, toxic gases, and airplanes became available. We are really really exceptionally ridiculously good at indiscriminately killing. Our military only bogs down once we decide to only kill specific insurgents and such.
The point is that the New Deal was a holding pattern for the next war. Governments like war. There was a surrender in World War I and the need to finish a job.
Today is a different concern. There are no more wars to be fought.
Government, our government, uses the war term a lot: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror, and the war on crime, it's a mobilization of man power, jobs.
The one concern today is feeding the world population. There are no amount of weapons that can contain six billion hungry people. We are at a point of global population saturation. There are no more New Worlds to conquer.
Wait, your argument was that FDR anticipated the rise of Nazism 4 years before he started, and then launched the New Deal as a strategy to keep things together just a little bit until it started?
That makes no sense! Why did we wait until 1942 to enter the war if we were so eager for it to save us?
Rampant protectionist nationalism. The people of the United States wanted to avoid going back to war. Congress made speeches about leaving Europe to the Europeans.
FDR did absolutely nothing but throw money around on make work projects. There was nothing to win, no goal, no end result.
Yes, politicians knew we were headed back to Europe. Hitler was probably not the best choice for democratic reform of the monarchies, but he would do. He railed against communism. Hitler, like capitalists, thought there was a survival of the fittest.
In my opinion we encouraged Hitler. Communism bad, capitalism good, democracy good, and Germany was acting in a democratic fashion. Hitler was elected by a small margin, but elected none the less.
We are also forgetting that the Great Depression was global. It impacted Europe and helped to give rise to Hitler. Hitler was hope.
I also like the term "to save us." Save us from what? The Great Depression? Why would FDR care? He was buying votes by throwing money at make work projects. The war saved him from being a bigger buffoon than he actually was.
FDR did nothing. He refused to engage what was surely a dangerous enemy, he gave no direction to the country, he allowed starvation while building monuments. He was kind of like our last Emperor.
Comments
Let's not forget that Reaganomics also brought us 3 recessions (one quickly becoming a depression), huge deficits and continually growing difference between the rich and the middle class.
The funny thing about all of the talk about socialism (which we aren't) is that what we were heading towards, and kind of had was a Plutocracy, or rule by the rich.
Frankly, while many of us will be well off thru much of our lives, it's very unlikely that any of us will ever be in the top 5%. I would rather that money be "spread around" down, rather than up and just be happy to eat table scraps that slosh out of the trickledown cup.
Reagan spent government money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Had it not been for GW Bush, he would have been the President who increased our nation debt load the most.
People like to credit that spending with the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. We will likely never know the answer to that one.
The Great Depression was an extension of the War effort in Europe. We mobilized man power inside of the country rather than directing it at a foriegn enemy.
Reagan out spent the Russians militarially. It was very deliberate.
Man power needs to be busy in order to have an economy. We detest welfare but think nothing about propping up corporations who contribute very little to the common good. The banking industry comes immediately to mind.
Trading dollars on make work projects during the Depression did very little for us. It was the redirection of the war effort that brought us prosperity again.
We do need to look outside of our borders for future economic growth. I think all of history shows us that. War brings spoils from foriegn lands.
So I think the New Deal was just a holding pattern trying to keep protectionism alive in a resource rich continent. It just wasn't enough to give people incentive for more.
You're right. That worked pretty good for us in both Iraq wars and in Vietnam. Gave us tons of spoils and helped alot with our economy.
Oh wait, there were recessions right after all three of those, weren't there? And what sort of spoils did we get from those wars exactly?
If there's one thing that the Bleeding hearts were wrong about it's that Iraq II wasn't blood for oil. We certainly didn't get better oil prices as a result of our occupation there.
We do have better oil prices. Viet Nam opened up a new world for the United States. The French took a shot, and now we seem to be there all over the place.
What decade are you living in exactly?
Average price of a barrel in 2001: $23 (inflation adjusted $27.59)
Average price of a barrel in 2008: $99.65
Current price right now: $37.67
Average gas price adjusted for inflation in 2001: about 1.68 a gallon
Average gas price today: a little over $2 a gallon.
So yeah, our oil prices are a hell of alot better than they were a year ago. But not better than when the war started and especially not for the last 6 years while the war has been going on.
For all the comparison with historical values, there isn't an way to adjust the data for all the other changes that occured in the world. Demand from China, India, the Middle East, etc. has all increased and technology has driven down margins as the amount of world-wide competition has gone up. To attribute changes to one particular event or decision is simplistic.
I was mostly speaking incredulously at David's comment that oil prices are so much better right now. Sure. Better than they were 6 months ago.
As a historical fact there is no winning a ground war with the Chinese. There are just too many people in the service of that country to be able to win a war. We left a no win situation, but we still have a huge presence in Viet Nam. As a matter of fact we are trading partners with China also.
You brought up blood for oil. We now have a direct presence in Iraq and are talking with Iran. In my opinion the run up in oil prices was based on speculation of future consumption. Our war effort had nothing to do with that run up in pricing.
Iraq is a war we won by the standards of war against a tyrant, as we call Hussien. We killed his sons and put them on display. We captured him, put him on trial, and hanged him. If the definition of a win is killing the king we did that and then some.
War makes economic sense. We manufacture durable goods that are ultimately lost or destroyed. It's an endless chain of economic growth. War employs millions of people, It keeps them busy and opens up endless possibilities of further economic expansion.
I think the new deal was waiting for war. It was keeping people busy. The United States was in a nationalistic, protectionist mode and there were many idled hands. We had conquered this country and gone back to Europe.
We wanted to come home and hold out for a prosperity that never came. There was no reason for prosperity. There was no incentive. There were no new worlds to conquer. It's just human nature.
I think you're confusing Vietnam with Korea. It was fairly recent history where we normalized relations with Vietnam. Like I believe in the last 5 years?
One of the biggest reasons we lost in Vietnam was a fundamental misunderstanding of the Vietnamese people and culture. LIke for instance the fact that they hated the Chinese about as much as they hated us. Lack of understanding of culture of Iraq is a large reason why things have gone so poorly there.
You should watch Fog of War. Great documentary about Robert McNamara. He talks pretty in depth about Vietnam and what many of the failures there were.
If that's the way you want to define winning, then awesome. Why are we still there then fighting if we already won? We certainly didn't have to have ongoing combat operations in Germany or Japan, even though we maintained a presence in those countries
Mostly I brought up the blood for oil thing to make a point about what you said. Which was that war brings spoils from foriegn lands. My point was, what spoils did we get from Vietnam, or either Iraq war? I made the comment about blood for oil to be sarcastic. What spoils exactly did we get from any of those wars? And were the spoils enough to offset the cost of the war? I would say no.
Anda
OK, durable goods are things that are NOT lost or destroyed or consumed right away, but rather can be used for several years. Like a refrigerator. Or a car. Therefore, war machines, ammo, bombs, etc. are NOT durable goods.
War is good short term for an economy because it produces much manufacturing and what not. It's unsustainable economic growth though, because you are shipping all of your resources (manpower, goods, money, food, etc) to another country. If there are no "spoils", then you end up having alot of production economically with nothing to show for it in the end. Because you are not creating durable goods that can the
WWII was tough on our economy. There was rationing. MOney was scarce. THey had to market war bonds like crazy to pay for it and everyone sacrificed because it was the right thing to do morally we thought as a country.
The money for the war machine has to come from somewhere. Think of it this way. I make guitars and you like to buy them from me and then smash them. I'm more than happy to continue to sell you guitars that you can then smash as much as you like.
The problem here is, that your job is to smash guitars. You don't play them, or it's not part of some wierd performance art. You are just paid to smash them.
So who pays that salary for you smashing the guitars? All of your friends do. So they have to sacrifice what they have in order to buy my guitars so you can spend all day smashing them. Unless you were smashing them over someone's head and then stealing their money, there's no economic growth in a guitar smashing career.
So once people are done paying you to smash guitars, there's no demand for guitars to smash anymore and I lay off my work force because there's no demand anymore.
So again, how did either Iraq wars make our economy better? What spoils did we get from there?
Likewise, our principle objective was to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We accomplished that. So in that sense, we did succeed ("win") there, too.
Both wars share some common traits - both lacked an understanding of the ramifications of war, the culture of the enemy, and an exit strategy. As a result they're usually viewed as "losing" wars.
FDR's treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May of 1939: But whatever. That dude probably didn't know what he was talking about.
I don't know if you've heard of this, but there are other news sources outside of Fox News.
Let's all be honest for a moment. Reagan was immensely popular when he left office, but his legacy is not looking very sparkling at the moment. In fact, I would now say he was likely one of the 10 worst presidents we've had. I guess he just looks good compared to the most recent GOP president. Although, to be fair, we've had kind of crappy presidents for most of the last 40 years or so.
FWIW, trickle down economics had nothing to do with the wealth in the 90s. A lot of that wealth was imaginary (as witnessed when the bubble burst), and the rest was due to a temporary event of massively increasing debt and cheap goods from developing nations. Reagan's policy directly resulted in this current crash, as well as the dotcom crash. Add in the regional impact he has had in the middle east due to the Iran-Contra affair, and don't forget the terribly expensive and ultimately pointless war on drugs.
The only major spot on his resume that appears to be mostly unblemished is the break up of the Soviet Union. Without even discussing whether or not that has been worth it, I will point out that the military mode of operations (massive spending on fighter jets and all-out-war weapons) has actually been a major blight on our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let's return to Vietnam. All we could ever hope for in Vietnam was to hold out long enough to make a peace.
That peace never came and we call that a loss. We are however well liked in South, and in many cases North Vietnam. We attempted to hold off the Chinese, and you are very correct the Chinese are hated in Vietnam. Any occupier is hated by the occupied. The Chinese are now the occupiers of Vietnam and we are a fading memory of what could have been.
As far as Iraq, there are tribal factions who have no allegiance to a central power. The idea that Saddam Hussein was in power is only in the minds of Americans. Only Allah has the power in Iraq. it is his will that the people follow. There are no weapons that can fight that ideology. So if you are talking about winning there it will only be by submitting to the will of Allah and that may prove difficult.
Winning or losing makes no difference however to the fact war is good for economic growth.
The New Deal was a redirection of a war effort. No matter how you look at it World War One was never finished. We kicked the Kaiser back to Germany, but it was the failings of the monarchies that were the underlying cause of the war. We even welcomed the grass roots rise of Hitler as an opposing force by the people.
As long as the Czar of Russia was in power war was inevitable. Our participation, to protect our interests, was set in stone.
How any of this relates to today's stimulus package was best summed up at today's G7 meeting. Protectionism has no place in today's economy. If one country fails we all fail. I am paraphrasing. A New Deal today would have to be global in concept. It's a new type of World War.
A quote i like from the Vietnam era by an economist was "in the future wars will be fought economically."
I believe the best analogy in history I can think of right now is 1930. People know things are getting bad, but it hasn't really hit home yet. Remember that just as the depression was drawing to a close we wound up in WWII in 1941. That really makes me stop and think considering how my 4 year old son will be a teen-ager 10 years from now. I have no idea what terrible war will arise that calls out for the blood of the nation's youth, but I think that the odds of such an event is non-trivial.
The New Deal arose at the bottom of a great generational economic downturn, and it is significant that it was enacted <i>after</i> the economy had reached a bottom in 1932.
Socialisim waxes and wanes with the mood of society. When every is feeling happy and "bullish", socialism becomes marginalized. When everone is bearish, socialism reigns supreme.
That is the whole point here that I would like to make. Our economies have centered around war since the beginning of time. Governments pump in money for weapons, troop deployment, bases, air craft, the navy, technology, and biological research.
In the end what do we get?
There are no more colonies. Every inch of dirt on the planet has been conquered. The New Deal of the 1930s was a protectionist disaster.
Global cooperation is the only thing that we can do from now on. In my opinion the stimulus package will give the United States something to do while we address the larger international issues that need to be dealt with.
If anything was naive it was John McCain insisting he could win a war anywhere. The only way to win is to feed the people of that country and have them like us for the generousity. For the same amount of money we spend on killing people or threatening to kill people we can win minds and bodies.
Not quite. Between the beginning of agriculture and about 1850, all economies have been centered around raising and harvesting crops. Just over 100 years ago, the vast majority of people worked as farmers or farm hands.
I think it's an interesting statement, but like Rose said, most economies have been based on people getting by and living life. Food, shelter and clothing. Necessities for survival.
If you have crops they need to be stored, distributed, and protected. You can grow a certain type of crop, but it's hard to rotate all crops in one geographic loacation. Trade was the first economic force and I think kind of trumps agriculture.
All in all there was a point where the masons need to make stronger fortresses, because there were elements in the world that took the crops rather than grow them. Finanlly if you are saying that the industrial revolution changed our agri society into a manufacturing based economy, then the New Deal was for you.
War is a constant. Out of need or greed people just kill each other. It's a sad commentary, but it has to change.
This thread was about the New Deal. It was a period of waiting for war. It was a redirection of a work force in a protectionist, nationalistic endevour that was disasterous economically.
If there is a comparison between the New Deal and today's Stimulus Package it should be that today we work for the global economy. We are all in this together. There is no more hiding behind your own borders.
I mentioned earlier that there is no winning a ground war with China. China has never been conquered. It's because of thier numbers. There are 1.3 billion people in China. If they chose to they could march across Europe. There is nothing that could be done about it. Speculation is that they wouldn't even need to be armed.
For that matter 1 million illegal immigrants cross our border from Mexico every year. If they ever organized, met at one place at one time, they could lock arms and march into the United States.
The stimulus package had better have something for the problems we have globally today. My hope is that Obama starts talking about getting the auto industry out of the gas combustion engine business. Oil and coal are old, dead technologies that we need to get rid of. Nuclear didn't work, but there are millions of technological advances that come out every day that can change things for the better.
Those four million jobs Obama wants to create need to have a positive global impact. That's the New Deal.
Losh, you're rambling and off point again. Where to begin...let's see, before trade or agriculture there was hunting and gathering. But your original point had been about war being the be-all-end-all of economic activity. We're only discussing agriculture as a counterpoint to that historically insane argument you laid forth.
About China...WTF? No, wrong, wrong. One million, or even one billion unarmed people marching anywhere would be trivial for any modern military to stop if they were willing to kill them all. This has been true since roughly the start of the 20th century when machine guns, toxic gases, and airplanes became available. We are really really exceptionally ridiculously good at indiscriminately killing. Our military only bogs down once we decide to only kill specific insurgents and such.
The point is that the New Deal was a holding pattern for the next war. Governments like war. There was a surrender in World War I and the need to finish a job.
Today is a different concern. There are no more wars to be fought.
Government, our government, uses the war term a lot: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror, and the war on crime, it's a mobilization of man power, jobs.
The one concern today is feeding the world population. There are no amount of weapons that can contain six billion hungry people. We are at a point of global population saturation. There are no more New Worlds to conquer.
So, no New Deal this time around.
That makes no sense! Why did we wait until 1942 to enter the war if we were so eager for it to save us?
FDR did absolutely nothing but throw money around on make work projects. There was nothing to win, no goal, no end result.
Yes, politicians knew we were headed back to Europe. Hitler was probably not the best choice for democratic reform of the monarchies, but he would do. He railed against communism. Hitler, like capitalists, thought there was a survival of the fittest.
In my opinion we encouraged Hitler. Communism bad, capitalism good, democracy good, and Germany was acting in a democratic fashion. Hitler was elected by a small margin, but elected none the less.
We are also forgetting that the Great Depression was global. It impacted Europe and helped to give rise to Hitler. Hitler was hope.
I also like the term "to save us." Save us from what? The Great Depression? Why would FDR care? He was buying votes by throwing money at make work projects. The war saved him from being a bigger buffoon than he actually was.
FDR did nothing. He refused to engage what was surely a dangerous enemy, he gave no direction to the country, he allowed starvation while building monuments. He was kind of like our last Emperor.