me: > ... In the US, however, Keynesianism has been military > in its emphasis _in practice_, since military spending is politically > more acceptable than civilian spending. (In the "Golden Age" of US > Keynesianism, building the transcontinental freeway system was > justified in terms of military goals, while much of the era's policies > relied on the GI Bill.)... In Western Europe, under social democracy, > Keynesian policy was less military in its emphasis.
Shane: > But in that period (from Bretton Woods through the 1950's at least) Keynes > and his ideas were totally out of favor among politicians. Neither Truman > nor Eisenhower had any time for Keynes. Right. But this was a case of "speaking prose all one's life without knowing it." Though anti-Keynesian in words, government policy was essentially Keynesian in deeds because the government's large budget and the automatic stabilizers (arising from WW2 and the New Deal) acted as a balance wheel that moderated the fluctuations of the post-WW2 US economy (after the initial demobilization). > The entirely civilian Interstate > Highway System was "sold" to congressional idiots as "defensive" but it > obviously had no significance to the US's totally offensive military posture > based on air/space power and forward foreign deployment. My point was that it _had_ to be sold in those terms. > And the GI Bill > (perhaps the best law Congress ever passed) was a completely civilian > program, benefiting veterans of the past war but *not* those to be > conscripted for future wars. Again, it was "sold" in military terms. BTW, it was party a response to inter-war class struggles by veterans (the Bonus March, etc.) and fears of the same after the war. It's hard to tell what happened with strikes since the data start only in 1947, but there was a common fear that the US was returning to Depression conditions at the end of the war. > If there was a "keynesian" period in US > politics it began with Kennedy and ended with Nixon. Before and after they > were all overt "Balanced Budget" fetishists (whatever their fiscal record in > practice). That's true if we only look at what the politicians said, rather than what they did. FDR was anti-Keynesian in theory (and mostly in practice), but WW2 mobilization pushed him to embrace what was (in effect) Keynesian stimulus. -- Jim Devine / "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
