Amity Shlaes and Jonathan Alter debate the Great Depression (9 of 9)

[chrisizq]

Shlaes had the more convincing argument. The FDR policies more than anything else made people feel better but didn't actually make anything better. If not for the war build up, we would have been mired in the depression for much longer. I understand the temptation and desperation for the govt to do something was great, but big govt made things worse...just look at the 1937 double dip numbers.

[boing3887]

amity shlaes knows nothing about economics. she read those books that basically present economics as philosophy (starting from a principle and then drawing conclusions, all the while ignoring the real world). her book uses stock market prices to "show" that the new deal was bad for americans. she has to resort to this because all the standard measures show the opposite. the also ignores WWII because war mobilization was basically a super-new deal in terms of spending

[EVOB88]

@boing3887 Give me a break! You sir a charlatan of the first class, WW2 killed 60 million people, is that what you are proposing?

[boing3887]

@EVOB88

what are you talking about? that i endorse war? No. but we could've spent the same amount or similar as to WWII (this was funded by deficit spending as well, remember?) and gotten out of the depression. no killing necessary. we could've had the govt. buy tanks and planes and then push them into the sea (which was baiscally happening anyways since once made, they were sent to germany to get blown up) to achieve the same stimulatory result.

[hegemonymony]

@boing3887

Dude, did you not see the gargantuan obviousness?

Amity owned Little Johnny.

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

perhaps in some fantasy world in which the majority of economists support supply-side tax cuts or the gold standard. but the majority of economic research is quite clear, by the top experts in the field - amity shlaes' account is just hogwash

[hegemonymony]

@boing3887

You're cute. What sources of information led you to believe in this fantasy? I want names and sources.

I would argue that you are too heavily invested in your distorted worldview to open your mind up to seeing the bigger picture. I'd be happy to explain how the system works to you... but it requires that you be objective.

Are you up to this?

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

starting off argument with condescension and questioning the others' intelligence/sanity doesn't work.

why couldn't i just say the same to you then? YOU be objective. YOU are too heavily invested in your distorted worldview to see the big picture. i will explain how the system works to YOU. this line of argument is nonsense.

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

amity shlaes uses the dow industrial avg to measure how the economy is doing instead of gdp or unemployment numbers. why? bc using gdp or unemployment numbers, like most people, would yield the wrong results. so instead she uses the dow, which is a reflection of how well the tiny minority of large stockholders are doing. if we were to use the dow industrial avg to measure the economy today, in the era of obama, we could conclude that the economy is making a strong recovery.

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

on top of that amity shlaes ignores historical figures in the official "Historical Statistics of the United States," which pretty much all economists/historians/etc use and instead excludes the number of jobs generated by the new deal. why? bc it was govt.-generated, or through deficit spending? well, the iraq and afghanistan wars are and were funded through deficit spending, and bush ran huge deficits, should we make that adjustment to unemployment numbers for bush?

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

by amity shlaes' methodology, all the additional troops called into action by the iraq/afghanistan wars are simply govt. deficit spending and/or artificial jobs. and even if the new deal failed, what about WWII? WWII was funded completely through deficit spending and raised govt. debt to levels unseen since, not even close today. the govt. basically converted our economy into a complete command economy. and we recovered and prospered for 30 years after.

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

unemployment under roosevelt never exceeded levels under hoover, and all the top economists who have studied the great depression have concluded that simply doing nothing, or just cutting the deficit, would NOT have helped. the experts on the subject all conclude that getting off the gold standard helped set the conditions which allowed recovery stimulus programs like the new deal or WWII mobilization to work.

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

to disagree with the mainstream of the economic profession on this historical point is to say that you know more than people who have spent years not only studying economic history and economic theory but also studying extremely advanced statistical, mathematical, and econometric techniques which basically make them mathematicians who study econ.

what is left then? shlaes complains that business was offended. well, who cares. if you love business so much, go worship wall street

[boing3887]

@hegemonymony

so there, hegewhatever, i laid out my argument without attacks to your honesty or intellectual ability. lets see what facts and arguments you can come up with without resorting to condescension.

are you up to this?