Posted on 05/03/2020 10:45:45 AM PDT by rintintin
The United States is clearly heading towards a full-blown economic depression. Some 26.5 million people have filed for unemployment over the last few weeks — erasing all the employment gains since 2008, with more surely to come — and recent sales data in most economic sectors is apocalyptically bad. The true unemployment rate may already be over 20 percent. It's not at all unrealistic to think the coming decade could resemble the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Indeed, the political reaction is beginning to resemble the '30s in troubling ways already. Congress has passed several enormous economic rescue measures, but it seems the latest bill — containing a boost to the small business bailout, plus some money for hospitals and testing — will be the last one for some time. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is quickly pivoting to austerity, saying that the national debt is too high and suggesting that states should be able to declare bankruptcy instead of being rescued.
The results of this would be nothing less than catastrophic, ensuring the economic crisis would be even worse. And the basic economic misunderstanding and ideological stubbornness behind the impulse shows that America's political class is in desperate need of re-re-learning the lessons of the Great Depression, what it really took to get us out of it, and of the man who refused to fix it, President Herbert Hoover.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Must save public unions and left wing politicians....
Many don’t realize that FDR’s “New Deal” mainly consisted of Hoover policies, wrapped up in a new package, with a nice, shiny bow on top.
We need a New New Deal. I know! Let’s color it Green.
we had a hoover once- wow was it heavy, bloated- didn’t work well-
And they prolonged the Depression. What ended the depression was all the wealth streaming into the US after we participated in bombing the shit out of a big chunk of the industrialized world.
It’s Red on the inside!
Bill Clinton had a nose like a Hoover.
Great Depression I was caused by economic factors. Great Depression II was caused purely by restrictions imposed by political hacks in response to media-driven hysteria.
Yep, half the world decided that the most inefficient economic system ever designed by Man was the way to go, in Communism. And the rest of the industrial world had to be rebuilt. So we were effectively the only fully-functioning industrial society from 1945-1955.
The worst problem we have today is not the pandemic nor the unemployment.
The worst problem we have today, and it should scare the hell out of everyone, is that our present government is implementing the same FDR methods, but on a scale never dreamed of by FDR and guaranteeing a financial crash worse than that of the 1930’s.
The solution is to get government out of economic planning.
I am not saying that the government should not make cash reimbursements to those it has damaged, but that assistance should be immediate with no strings attached and the end of government meddling in the economy.
FDR and the Democrats raised the income tax rate to 75% in the middle of the Depression. Nobody with money was dumb enough to risk their capital, start a business, and hire people.
Communism held up only while state slavery did.
BTW, I get odd reactions when I say that we should be thankful for those money grubbing robber barons who brought about industrialization on the backs of commerce rooted in voluntary exchange and who didn’t fill the land with mass graves the way socialists were wont to do.
“For decades, conservatives have been writing preposterous alternative histories trying to absolve conservative policy from exacerbating the Depression.”
This is the really brutal moment of this article. I guess he is claiming that even Milton Friedman is completely out to lunch as Friedman in his writings (such as Free To Choose) very effectively challenged the accepted narrative as to what happened during those years. The main thing I recall reading in Friedman’s account of things is that the Federal Reserve did all sorts of unusual things on it’s own that shrunk the money supply, causing numerous banks to fail, and in turn that’s what really brought on the nastiness of those years.
I also wonder where Mr. Cooper was during eight years of Obama (as opposed to only about 3.25 years of Trump) to sound the alarm bell if we are truly headed towards a repeat of the 1930s Depression?
But one of the consequences of a market economy is the boom and bust cycle. Somewhere along the line people got sold a bill of goods that Government intervention could put a stop to that.
Well... It worked before
Stop whining and open up America
I’m still amazed that FDR even said this, during the 1935 State of the Union:
“The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.”
If somebody said this today, they’d be labelled an extreme Right-Winger.
National
Recovery
Act
“Great Depression I was caused by economic factors.”
Actually, it wasn’t. It was a recession that started by then expanded through socialist FDR’s unconstitutional policies.
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