Oops.
‘When goods don’t cross borders, armies will.’
In my bookshelf I have some american books from 1990:s about the `squeeze of the middle class´. Some days ago I saw a video, at the reason.tv channel on youtube, about how rich the middle class in america really is.
Here is the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvvuHREm5jg
This is really another discussion but I am not sure that free trade drives GDP growth.
Like a comment stated under the video, all the middle class toys are owned by someone else, the banks.
I am for free trade without regulation and tariffs, I am for free movement over borders (worker and goods), but on which terms do growth take place?
One can not build an economy on promises to produce in the future.
A couple things first -
Your chart is highly compressed in and about the years in contest (Great Depression);
This can lead the drawing of the wrong assumptions when considering the legislation/acts of congress (and government in general) year by year.
For instance, the big DIP in GDP bottomed out in 1933 - htis is HARDLY visible on your chart!
Presenting data in this format essentially wipes out one’s ability to perform any meaningful analysis on the going by the fine-grained details of the day ... maybe that’s what the US Dept. of Commerce (souce of your charts?) would like ...
Let's see if our friend the <PRE> tag will yield some tabular data:
GOVERN CON MENT SUMP INVEST PUR EXPO IMPO NET YEAR GDP TION MENT CHASES RTS RTS EXPORTS ---- ----- ----- ---- ----- ---- ---- ----- 1929 790.9 593.9 92.4 105.4 35.6 46.3 -10.7 1930 719.7 562.1 59.8 116.2 29.4 40.3 -10.9 1931 674.0 544.9 37.6 121.2 24.4 35.2 -10.8 1932 584.3 496.1 9.9 117.1 19.1 29.2 -10.1 1933 577.3 484.8 16.4 112.8 19.2 30.4 -11.2 1934 641.1 519.0 31.5 127.3 21.4 31.1 -9.7 1935 698.4 550.9 58.0 131.3 22.6 40.7 -18.1 1936 790.0 606.9 75.5 152.5 23.7 40.2 -16.5 1937 831.5 629.7 94.0 147.0 29.9 45.3 -15.4 1938 801.2 619.5 61.3 157.8 29.6 35.2 -5.6 1939 866.5 654.0 79.5 171.8 31.2 36.9 -5.7 1940 941.2 688.0 111.3 174.2 35.4 37.8 -2.4 1941 1101.8 737.1 137.3 288.0 36.4 46.5 -10.1 1942 1308.9 719.7 72.1 692.0 23.9 42.2 -18.3