Obama making the same mistake...

[Mega]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle5733858.ece
Mike

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

You have great papers in the UK, but the BBC sucks. Anyway, this is another very interesting comment in the British papers.

I disagree with the article somewhat. The New Deal did work a bit, otherwise people would have starved.

The New Deal of FDR kept people working, and what the workers did was create wealth by needed projects like: the Golden Gate Bridge, like the Bonneville Dam, like the Hoover Dam, like power plants everywhere, bridges everywhere, road repair, and road construction, flood control projects. This creates wealth because it makes the entire economy more productive and efficient.

But where is the wealth that the Obama stimulus plan is going to create? For example, where are the nuclear power plants being built? Where are the hydro-electric power plants being built?

And let's look at the Obama school construction plan: How does school construction to preach an archaic and completely worthless school curriculum (designed by George Bush and his Dept. of Education and complete with phonics and English-only, timed testing, white history, cursive, and rote memorizations) help the economy, especially after the schools are built?

Then we have issues like Milwaukee, Wisconsin where new schools are going to be built while fifteen older schools now sit vacant.

At least during the New Deal, FDR had the good sense to put miners to work mining silver so that silver dollars could be coined. And silver dollars were coined en masse and placed into circulation to replace most all paper money under $20 denomination in 1934 and 1935. If nothing else, this gave confidence to the currency and to the New Deal.

If the Obama Administration would now follow the New Deal with the Obama stimulus plan, I could support the stimulus, but the way it is written now, this could be an inflationary disaster.

The Obama stimulus plan protects banks, but how does it protect savers? What does the stimulus plan do to encourage savings and make saving safe?

Unfortunately, the Obama stimulus plan is more or less a rehash of the Bush stimulus plan, except that the Obama stimulus plan is even larger. This is not real change for America, and America is begging for a New Deal.

[ricket]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

The New Deal of FDR kept people working, and what the workers did was create wealth by needed projects like: the Golden Gate Bridge, like the Bonneville Dam, like the Hoover Dam, like power plants everywhere, bridges everywhere, road repair, and road construction, flood control projects. This creates wealth because it makes the entire economy more productive and efficient.

Excellent analysis. Nice job.

[Sharky]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

I disagree with the article somewhat. The New Deal did work a bit, otherwise people would have starved.

Taking money from the productive and giving it to the unproductive did not prevent any starvation. It just extended everyone's misery. No new jobs were created by the New Deal; they were just shuffled from the private sector to government.

The New Deal of FDR kept people working, and what the workers did was create wealth by needed projects like: the Golden Gate Bridge, like the Bonneville Dam, like the Hoover Dam, like power plants everywhere, bridges everywhere, road repair, and road construction, flood control projects. This creates wealth because it makes the entire economy more productive and efficient.

Creating infrastructure where it isn't economically justified is a waste of resources, and slows long-term growth. The country would have been a lot better off if the money that was put into those projects had been spent instead by individuals to increase productive capacity, each in their own way. The ROE is always higher for private investment than for anything government-directed -- particularly the New Deal, which then left us with a legacy of massively increased government intervention in the economy.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

Taking money from the productive and giving it to the unproductive did not prevent any starvation. It just extended everyone's misery. No new jobs were created by the New Deal; they were just shuffled from the private sector to government.



Creating infrastructure where it isn't economically justified is a waste of resources, and slows long-term growth. The country would have been a lot better off if the money that was put into those projects had been spent instead by individuals to increase productive capacity, each in their own way. The ROE is always higher for private investment than for anything government-directed -- particularly the New Deal, which then left us with a legacy of massively increased government intervention in the economy.

Hi Sharky,

There is an army of asset allocation experts on the streets. I think they are called consumers. All they need to do is lower income taxes and give out tax credits and the problem is solved. I think they don't want to solve the problem. They want to solve the banker's problems.

The new deal was nothing. Expanding the money supply is what solved the depression. Considering that a depression is caused by a constricted money supply ya think? Its not rocket science. Of course they also need to rip out the Federal reserve system and fractional reserves. They should replace bank credit created currency with Lincoln greenbacks and we would be in paradise and the bankers in hell were they belong.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

During the misery of the Depression in San Francisco, one had to take a ferry boat to leave the city and go to Marin County or to Oakland. If that crossing, to or from San Francisco was anything like what I go through to get to or from Victoria on Vancouver Island with ferries, that crossing is a half-day affair and extraordinarily expensive.

People were so outraged in SF, they mortgaged their homes to put-up money for the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin because banks had otherwise refused to lend money for the bridge. The New Deal helped with the completion of the GG Bridge which opened in 1934. Later in 1936,the New Deal put-up money for the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge, and construction began. That bridge opened in 1939.

Witness now the outrage and waste in the U.S. private healthcare system. The life span in the U.S. now being the shortest of any country in the industrial world is proof of the failure of private enterprise to always deliver the best solution possible.

Unfortunately, there is inefficiency here in British Columbia with the crossing between Victoria and Vancouver City. Here the inefficiency seems to be the fault of BC Ferries, a public company. Whatever, the best solution seems to be a bridge between the two cities, but the B.C. government refuses to fund this or even consider this solution seriously.

I am in favour of whatever solution works best. Sometimes the best solution is by government, and sometimes it is by the private sector.

The New Deal in America prevented starvation during the Depression because the unemployed were given jobs. Savers were rescued, and banks were left to fail. People were given dignity, and the government was given taxes. Everyone paid taxes, and the rich paid their fair share of taxes. Corporations paid taxes. There were no tax holidays, no tax shelters, nor tax revolts, not during the New Deal.

Certainly history records a Late Depression in 1939 in the U.S, but over all the New Deal did work. The dollar stayed strong, and prices fell. Unemployment fell. Needed projects were built. No-one starved. Savers were rescued. The elderly got social security. America stayed together, and there was no revolution. This is a lesson conservatives and especially neo-conservatives need to re-learn from history.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

During the misery of the Depression in San Francisco, one had to take a ferry boat to leave the city and go to Marin County or to Oakland. If that crossing, to or from San Francisco was anything like what I go through to get to or from Victoria on Vancouver Island with ferries, that crossing is a half-day affair and extraordinarily expensive.

People were so outraged in SF, they mortgaged their homes to put-up money for the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin because banks had otherwise refused to lend money for the bridge. The New Deal helped with the completion of the GG Bridge which opened in 1934. Later in 1936,the New Deal put-up money for the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge, and construction began. That bridge opened in 1939.

Witness now the outrage and waste in the U.S. private healthcare system. The life span in the U.S. now being the shortest of any country in the industrial world is proof of the failure of private enterprise to always deliver the best solution possible.

Unfortunately, there is inefficiency here in British Columbia with the crossing between Victoria and Vancouver City. Here the inefficiency seems to be the fault of BC Ferries, a public company. Whatever, the best solution seems to be a bridge between the two cities, but the B.C. government refuses to fund this or even consider this solution seriously.

I am in favour of whatever solution works best. Sometimes the best solution is by government, and sometimes it is by the private sector.

The New Deal in America prevented starvation during the Depression because the unemployed were given jobs. Savers were rescued, and banks were left to fail. People were given dignity, and the government was given taxes. Everyone paid taxes, and the rich paid their fair share of taxes. Corporations paid taxes. There were no tax holidays, no tax shelters, nor tax revolts, not during the New Deal.

Certainly history records a Late Depression in 1939 in the U.S, but over all the New Deal did work. The dollar stayed strong, and prices fell. Unemployment fell. Needed projects were built. No-one starved. Savers were rescued. The elderly got social security. America stayed together, and there was no revolution. This is a lesson conservatives and especially neo-conservatives need to re-learn from history.

Hi Starving Steve,

The goal of building the bridge was building the bridge. I am in favor of most of the roads and sidewalks I use as well. However when the fundamental goal is to spend with a bridge being a side effect of intended spending it becomes dubious. I am in favor of some government spending for things we need and a depression is a good time to do them.

However the main goal now should be expanding the money supply and since our money is either government debt or bank credit I choose government debt over usurious thieving fractional reserves. The most direct means to do this is to cut taxes. Building something we need is also a benefit. However building roads that go nowhere is not terribly helpful.

However the spending in the stimulus is actually not what is most offensive. The 2 trillion headed towards that banks is far worse.

[D-Mack]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

Here’s something new: instead of the customary attempts to put an optimistic gloss on the state of the economy, our governments are doing exactly the opposite. Over here Ed Balls tells us, more or less, that this is the worst recession since dinosaurs roamed the primordial swamps. Meanwhile President Barack Obama declared last week that “if we don’t act immediately, our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse”. As The Economist commented, with some alarm: “The notion that [America] might never recover was previously entertained only by bearded survivalists stockpiling beans and ammunition in remote log cabins.”

Obama's Malaise Speech?

January 20, 2009 12:56 PM

A lot of talk about Obama’s speech already; was it more like Roosevelt’s or Kennedy’s?

I have a weird one to throw out there -- how about Jimmy Carter’s "malaise" speech?

Carter never actually used that word, but back in July of 1979, with the country in crisis, President Carter spoke of the dour national mood:

"The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America."

And somewhat surprisingly, to me at least, today President Obama said America is suffering from: "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights."


Boy, sounds like he is saying America is suffering a kind of malaise. Carter was pounded in the press for his speech. Obama will not be. Perhaps it shows how times have changed.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/liveblogging/

It's nothing new from Obama

[GRG55]

Re: Obama making the same mistake...

Taking money from the productive and giving it to the unproductive did not prevent any starvation. It just extended everyone's misery. No new jobs were created by the New Deal; they were just shuffled from the private sector to government.



Creating infrastructure where it isn't economically justified is a waste of resources, and slows long-term growth. The country would have been a lot better off if the money that was put into those projects had been spent instead by individuals to increase productive capacity, each in their own way. The ROE is always higher for private investment than for anything government-directed -- particularly the New Deal, which then left us with a legacy of massively increased government intervention in the economy.

Have you ever been in a place where the "government" doesn't actually work?


Take a trip to Lagos, Nigeria some day when you're bored with your well ordered life. I call it the ultimate capitalist society.

• If you want reliable electricity you buy a generator big enough to run your household or office;
• If you want to be sure you have fuel for it you make your own trade arrangements;
• If you want reliable telecommunications you put in your own satellite dish on the roof;
• If you want the pavement on the street in front you either bribe the right officials or pay a contractor to do it;
• on one of my trips out of there, British Airways couldn't get enough fuel for the flight to London, so they had to top up the tanks in Accra - hard to believe Nigeria is an OPEC nation, eh. :p
• and on it goes...

I'm sure you get the picture. It is Darwinian to an extreme that most of us would find intolerable.

There is a legitimate role for government and good policy. And for most of the post-war period in the last century the USA and Canada were the fortunate recipients of what appears, in hindsight, to have been a reasonable, if imperfect, dose of that.