On Mon, 31 Dec, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Then, they'll be fun -- at least among those academic economists who will
>still have secure jobs. The Keynesian remedy (such as Bush is trying now
>in a tentative way) won't work -- in just the same way that the New Deal
>didn't work for America in the 20s and 30s. It took WWII to bring the
>Depression to an end.
The "New Deal" didn't start until about 1933. And you could regard the
spending of WWII as simply (in its economic structure) an amplification
of the New Deal policy. That is, a sufficientlyy bold and enthusiastic
New Deal clearly works excellently. The unsurpassed prosperity of
the '50s and '60s, and all their ancilliary benefits, are a direct
result of this level of government intervention and public spending.
So it requires a war to get the necessary "public" (read: financial elite)
support to do that sort of thing? Well, god knows we're threatened
by enough imminent catastrophe to justify calling a war, on global
environmental degradation, poverty, and overt greed. Not that I remotely
expect the current global political philosophy of suicidal inertia
to alter to the point that such action could ever escape the realm
of fantasy, at least, not until all of oceana, Bangladesh, Nederland,
and Florida are under water, and drinkable fresh water costs more
than the last remaining traces of gasoline.
-Pete Vincent
