This morning I woke to the sound of my former congressman, Rep. Paul Ryan (WI-1), shilling for the Republican so-called plan on Morning Edition. I was frustrated that the reporter declined to follow up on a couple of standard-nonsense talking points. From the npr.gov write-up:
But Ryan says unemployment during the New Deal ranged from 12 to 25 percent. "Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary, came to the Ways and Means Committee at the end of that period and said, 'This was a disaster.' It didn't work. We borrowed so much money; we ran up the debt. We didn't get out of the Depression until World War II came along."First of all, unemployment went down, not up, during the New Deal. (As Jonathan Chait put it awhile back, blaming FDR for the fact that unemployment was higher than it was LATER is like blaming Jefferson for leaving office with a smaller country than we have now.)
Second, you can't criticize the idea of spending your way out of recession by saying that the war, not the New Deal, got us out of the Great Depression--because whichever of those two things made the difference, it was because the government spent money. The relative merit of spending on guns vs. butter is a different question, as much as conservatives might want to conflate the two.
In other news, it's clear that, as during the election, we've reduced our understanding of distinct, different-in-kind political ideologies to a single, one-dimensional continuum: from Mussolini to Mao, with U.S. politicians defined by how close they get to either pole. So here's a good corrective from Alan Wolfe, who reminds us that socialism isn't liberalism-but-more-so. Actually they're fundamentally different things.
funny stuff Steve. Perhaps if he said their plan was to use a scalpal to remove the hoplessness and stuff that hasn't changed and fill it with hope and changiness you would be happy with the meat in their plan.
ReplyDeleteIt is unusual though that a Republican wouldn't get the tough questions. Meanwhile Obama and Biden can say anything and it will be received by the press as if directly spoken to by a burning bush.
"Second, you can't criticize the idea of spending your way out of recession by saying that the war, not the New Deal, got us out of the Great Depression--because whichever of those two things made the difference, it was because the government spent money."
ReplyDeleteBut it does seem to matter where the Government spends the money. Unemployment crept downward during the new deal, but when it reached its low in 1937 it was still around 14% if I remember correctly. The recession of 1937, caused partly by cutbacks in Gov't spending, shot it back up to 19%. In 1942, it was under 5%, and in the middle of the war it was under 2%. Why? Well partly because the government was spending its money on industry. We will never have a war like that again - one won by American manufacturing. But the post-war demand for manufactured goods kept unemployment below 6% (except briefly) for three decades!