In a column in the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Tom Coburn writes:
I spoke with thousands of voters at town-hall meetings this summer. What I gathered from them is that it’s not just the proposed overhaul of health care that has them upset. Many also expressed a sense of betrayal. In spite of their hope for change, it still appears that the government in Washington is run for its own benefit and the benefit of special interests—not for the benefit of the American people. The folks I met with also don’t trust politicians in Washington to address mounting long-term challenges to our economy.
Despite the town halls and ample polling data, the president and Congress just don’t get it, he says:
Notwithstanding these polling results, the administration and Congress have responded by trying to win public support on the strength of an argument that’s too clever to be true. They say that the key to saving money is spending money, a lot of money. And they’ve done just that with a $787 billion stimulus program as well as billions in bailouts and proposals to spend vast sums on health-care reform and other things. Their belief seems to be that every government expenditure grows the economy or can be counterbalanced with cost savings.
It’s a confusing argument, and it’s flat wrong, particularly with regard to health care. The Congressional Budget Office has said as much when it stated a few weeks ago that the health-care legislation before Congress fails to restrain costs and instead “significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs.”
A more convincing argument would be this: Let’s save money by spending less. This argument doesn’t require a clever explanation.
It does, however, require a complete about-face from Washington and a realization that the public isn’t freaked out by a “health-care crisis” but by a fiscal crisis. Obama and the Democratic Congress tried to convince Americans, the vast majority with insurance they like, that not only was the health-care system in America in shambles but also that the existing spending binge had to be ramped up to pay for health care for millions. Oh, and Medicare is going to get slashed. You understand the reason why the president had difficulty selling this. At bottom, it is unintelligible.
But more than that, if Coburn is right, repackaging the same concepts isn’t going to get the president anywhere. Voters would just as soon prefer he do something else entirely—on fiscal control and restraining government entitlements, not expanding them. We’ll see if the public’s angst about government spending and the mound of accumulating debt can be soothed by a fancier health-care sales job.
But I suspect Coburn is on to something. Obama wants more government, spending, and taxes; voters want less of all three. The longer Obama persists in pushing what voters don’t want, the worse his political predicament will become.
“Leonhardt and other liberal economic writers have been flailing away at Amity Shlaes’s history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man, for stating what historians have understood for decades: that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t work.”
Because if you’re looking for a set of experts to judge the efficacy of economic policy, the obvious group to go for are…historians?
And that’s putting aside that you’re just making that up.
I wasn’t sure if Contentions could produce a post that is 100% bullsh*t but this comes awful close!
2
Yes, it’s nonsensical. Sure, military spending helped both the US and Germany out of the Depression, but it’s the spending portion that’s important, not that the spending was on arms or war. You could spend it on bridges and roads and have the same positive stimulative effects. The lessons of the New Deal are that government needs to spend massively and not let up too quickly.
Now that 1 and 2 have gotten the analytical, insightful comments out of the way, we can descend to the merely humorous, and observe the new role being carved out for the “reductio ad Hitleram” argument. Fascinating: if we will only hang with Obama while he borrows ever further into our future, we too can reap the economic rewards of German National Socialism.
History doesn’t suggest that this will work without geopolitical and military aggression, however. And frankly, there is nothing that would boost our economy like invading Iran and turning it into an occupied territory of the United States. For starters.
5- Dyer, we seem to have piled quite enough on the military’s plate for the nonce.
#4,”—there is nothing that would boost our economy like invading Iran and turning it into an occupied territory of the United States. For starters.
If the crisis pushes us into Depression,this is exactly how it might play out. And Saudi Arabia might be in the crosshairs also,and Venezuela. If we control the Oilfields,we’re out of the woods for now.
I don’t have time or space to elaborate fully, but there seems to be a concerted effort to discredit the New Deal and FDR by those on the right. I find this to be offensive.
For my take, the New Deal laid the groundwork and infrastructure that allowed for a faster mobilization of US forces during WWII. When grunts and sailors could look admirably at the size of their forces in 1943, they knew that America was producing. All of this production via New Deal projects in the 1930s (hydroelectric, roads, railways, shipyards, etc…) facilitated a far more rapid mobilization than could have been done if the US was simply starting from scratch on the morning of 12/8/1941.
And this is the key success of the New Deal. All of those historians that visit this site know that the Germans could have won second “Great War” with some better decisions (i.e. faster production of ME262 or delay of Operation Barbarossa for example). Time was not on the side of the allies. Mistakes by the Germans were our greatest asset. In order to capitalize on these mistakes, US production was the key to keeping the UK and the USSR in the battlefields.
There is no way that the US could have fielded an Army to fight in North Africa, Sicily and Italy by 1943 without having the firm infrastructure in place already that was created by FDR. I don’t know how to quantify my thoughts, but we can safely assume that the New Deal projects shortened the war by perhaps two years. That’s two years less of bloodshed and two years less of holocaust atrocities. Who knows how many jews and other ethnic “misfits” had their lives spared simply because of the power of US manufacturing and delivery that was made possible with the assistance of New Deal policy. Certainly all of those jews that were reduced to skin and bones seen in the now famous black & white footage and rescued in 1945 would have perished, and probably a few million others if the Nazi regime had been given more time to finish its goals.
Sorry to disagree vehemently with the right and even contentions on this issue, but I’m proud to say that the New Deal was very much a part of our success in WWII and very much part of the survival of untold numbers of concentration camp survivors.
You’re all free to disagree as you must in order to adhere to the GOP/conservative talking points of this era in regards to the New Deal. Anything to discredit a democrat president (past & former) seems to be the order of the day. That’s your perogative. And it’s my perogative to call you on it for the unjust accusation that it is.
You guys kill me with this “Obama is a Socialist/Fascist” talk.
Here are three links to recently released Bush-era Department of Justice memos. They each take about ten seconds to read.
http://tiny.cc/dXetH
http://tiny.cc/VU5oe
http://tiny.cc/tzHgj
In them the Bush Administration declares that it:
1) Has the power to use military force against U.S. civilians without reference to the Bill of Rights.
2) Has the power to eliminate First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of press rights with regard to U.S. citizens.
3) Has the power to destroy the private property of U.S. citizens without compensation.
You can read the entire background of these memo here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/03/yoo/ It’ll take you about five minutes.
I’m not a big poster of links, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. When Obama does anything even remotely resembling this, when he shows anything even remotely approaching such disregard for the rights of American citizens… well, come back then, and we’ll have a talk about Fascism.
#8–Lord, you children hyperventilate easily! Can you seriously posit any other view of the President’s powers? Do you really subscribe to the Constitution as suicide pact theory of jurisprudence? Whether Obama’s a socialist, a fascist, or a Rotarian, would you really want him to disclaim these powers, and mean it?
For extra credit: do you doubt that several other presidents, of both parties, have asserted and exercised these prerogatives?
and bush bashing was what exactly?
Calling all trolls-Calling all trolls
You won the election. You control both houses of congress.
Obama has high approval ratings.
Relax… go home and stopping worrying about the neocons.
If you can’t do that then you are showing a lack of confidence in the Dear Leader.
(or have other problems that shall remain unnamed.)
Here is another book some might find interesting:
The policies of the Roosevelt administration ended up prolonging the Depression, as Hillsdale College colleague Burton Folsom points out in his recent book, “New Deal or Raw Deal?”
12- DocC what’s the main contention of the book?
?
@ #10 -
If you want to focus on Bush’s poor treatment by the left and justify that as an excuse for these rediculous accusations about liberal-fascism, then that’s your right to do so. You can choose to play that stupid game and dumb down the political discourse to the provincial level of thought that dominates cable TV, most blogs and the talk radio shows.
The subject of this thread is the New Deal and innuendo of a rerun of nazism/fascism by the current administration. I’ll be very clear with you. This is the primary reason that I no longer vote republican, because I find these hateful and mean-spirited allegations (which form the dominant group-think of the right) to be disgusting. I’m more than sick of it. I don’t accuse of Bush or republicans of being goose-stepping fascists. Lefties that accuse the right of similar accusations are just as stupid and mean-spirited as those on the right that accuse the opposition of the same thing. Everything in modern American politics is about demonizing the opposition. Most of my family are loyal die-hard republicans. They support all the same stuff that you do (i.e. strong defense, anti-abortion, strong work ethic). These are good people, we just vote and think differently about certain issues. I could never demonize the opposition, since I’d knowingly be demonizing my own blood.
Keep up the good work though. You’re a credit to your party. You’ve substituted “Bush Derangement Syndrome” with “Obama Derangement Syndrome”.
I await to see your true genius if you choose to comment on my original post. Cheers.
Sorry to disagree vehemently with the right and even contentions on this issue, but I’m proud to say that the New Deal was very much a part of our success in WWII and very much part of the survival of untold numbers of concentration camp survivors.
I don’t think there is much disagreement that Roosevelt was a great war leader. If you wanted to carry your point even farther, you could say that the hardships of the Depression, which Roosevelt prolonged to toughen up the youth of America, helped to make our army victorious. See how silly it looks ?
We are talking about two phenomena. Roosevelt was a great leader who, like most economists of the time, did not understand economics. He needlessly prolonged the capital strike by waging war on the rich and on businessmen, the second far more important than first. Read about Wendell Willkie and his battles to save the private utilities from Roosevelt’s determination to nationalize electricity generation. Much of this was to punish poor Sam Insull who was the Michael Millkin of the 30s. He established the concept of a modern electric utility and got caught capital short at a bad time. Just like Millkin, without Insull we would have been worse off whatever his motives.
Schlaes’ book has nothing to say about Roosevelt’s war record.
Anthony R. Seta — I can’t agree with your analysis that the New Deal was essential to winning WWII, but even if I did, that argument is not a point in favor of the New Deal as an economic stimulator in its own right. It’s the latter case that’s being made for the Obama spending plan: that government spending, and command of more of the economy, is stimulative per se, and the problem with the New Deal was that FDR didn’t spend enough.
The case has been made before that the New Deal actually discouraged economic recovery. It hasn’t just suddenly become fashionable to assert that because Obama got elected. The political and economic right has been making that case as far back as I remember reading political commentary, which takes us to the early 1970s (I was a geek). Amity Shlaes’ book from 2006 was a particularly accessible popular treatment, but she in fact used the research done by other economists in the 1960s, ’70s, etc, as well as her own. There’s a long pedigree for the economic critique of the New Deal.
The question I would have for you is, what counterarguments do you make to the actual economic criticisms of the New Deal? There is nothing at all unfair or inappropriate in making criticisms of it that are supported by argument and evidence. The New Deal is not a religious precept that we are bound to believe in; it’s hardly iconoclasm to doubt its premises and criticize its outcomes. With Obama supporters now wanting to resurrect its principles of government spending and direct economic intervention, the topic of how well that worked under FDR is especially relevant right now.
“That’s right. Leonhardt believes that Adolf Hitler’s building of the autobahn, facilities for the 1936 Olympics, and other public works projects such as monuments to the Nazi Party “helped Germany escape the Great Depression faster than other countries.” Unmentioned by Leonhardt was Hitler’s vast expansion of the German military (long before the United States expanded its own armed forces) as well as the wealth that accumulated to various official arms of the state from the theft of Jewish properties. Later in the same piece, Leonhardt also lauds America’s World War II mobilization as showing the genius of a stimulus, though he fails to mention that along with all the tanks, planes, and ships that were built, nearly 15 million Americans were also under arms during the war. That helped lower unemployment too.”
Ah, so the Left truly ARE secretly wanting us to go to war.
“”Because if you’re looking for a set of experts to judge the efficacy of economic policy, the obvious group to go for are…historians?”
#1, Amity is not just a historian, she’s a historian trained in the field of economics. What? You thought that historians should only be trained in history? Shame on you!
page 134 LF
page 135 LF
Mr Seta, predictably enough, I agree with JED regarding your WW2 theory, and particularly your counterfactuals – especially your argument that “time was not on the side of the allies.” Given the much greater resources on the Allied side, time was very much against the Germans, in my opinion, but I’m not going to devote the time and effort it would take to sort out the rest of your analysis and offer my counter-counterfactuals.
I will say though, that, as a history buff, you might very much enjoy LIBERAL FASCISM if you got over your presumptions about it – that is, unless you already consider yourself an expert on the rise of Mussolini, the early years of Progressivism, the influence of the Eugenics movement on US social policy, Woodrow Wilson’s war administration, and the development of FDR & Co’s economic and political thinking, and so on. Goldberg is an entertaining writer, and, though he probably was hoping to make some liberals uncomfortable enough to re-think some of their assumptions, he doesn’t set out to prove that liberals are “as bad as fascists” or anything of the kind. Similarly, Shlaes’ book tells a fascinating and complex story in a sober but accessible manner, and is more concerned with explaining political and economic developments in relation to each other than in delving deeply into economic theory and second-guessing. In short, neither book is a tract. Neither reads like the work of an ideologue setting out to agitate the conservative reading masses into frenzies.
As for this thread, to the extent that it’s a response to the top post rather than to the peculiar mixture of paranoia and sophistry that emanates from the Greenwaldian precincts of further left world, the point is that Fascism and New Deal Liberalism did not grow up on separate planets. They were the leading responses of culturally and economically linked polities to overlapping crises, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they had features in common with each other and for that matter with Soviet Communism. Diverse Trotskyites, anarchists, and libertarians have been making this argument even longer than the writers that JED as a young geek was gobbling up.
Furthermore, before history’s sad verdicts were collected, and before several decades of national mythmaking and political name-calling set in, back in 1930, say, it would have been quite possible for a decent, moral, intelligent, well-informed if not fully briefed, not yet committed citizen to find much that was attractive in each of these then very fashionable -isms. It’s not really a great shame to the memory of FDR that he and his aides ever had nice things to say about Mussolini and Hitler, but it is interesting, and there’s no good intellectual reason to declare further investigations off limits.
On this note, insted of aiming for some reverse Olbermann or Greenwald and branding Obama as scary as Hitler, Mr Tobin offers a much more sober conclusion: “[T]here is a slippery slope in arguments that assume statist economies and systems are a good thing. There is a price to be paid for putting so much power in the hands of government.” Branding such statements inadmissible does a great disservice to political discussion, and refusing to examine their implications may do an even greater disservice to our nation.
#8 Andrew, are all these links about what Clinton did in Waco Texas? I mean when Government killed several dozens American kids? Leave alone adult American citizens? Or are these links about raids during Presidency of another great Democrat Woodrow Wilson? Or are they about detention of Japanese Americans during Presidency of another great Democrat, FDR?
“I’m more than sick… “
The chief symptom of the sickness is hysterical drivel,
of which these are short excerpts:
“rediculous accusations ”
“I don’t accuse of Bush or republicans of being…”
“Lefties that accuse the right of similar accusations”
If government “stimulus spending” is such a good idea during recessionary periods, why don’t we do it all the time? Then everyone could afford a new hybrid vehicle parked in the attached garage of the new house with the 56″ flat panel TV. Oh, wait a minute, we already have government stimulus spending, in the billions and billions. But we need more, even more than the more we’re adding, which wasn’t more enough. After all, isn’t any government spending really a “stimulus”? So when we pay farmers not to grow things and subsidize unmarried mothers and require federal agencies to buy multi-fuel vehicles for places with only one fuel and fund the Palestinian Authority ( maybe not that one) and all the other money devoted to federal programs, aren’t those stimuli? But it’s just not enough. In fact, wouldn’t it follow, that if the federal government got smaller, we’d be poorer? Since there would be less stimulus. Thus it also follows that the bigger the federal government and its budget, the richer we all are! And I thought economics was complicated!
Great exchanges on this post. On a cultural level, I think Obama is the 1st Helicopter President.
This past generation grew up with the helicopter parents. These parents were at event of their lives hovering around them, pushing for higher grades, screaming to win at games, and getting bigger trophies.
The actual world of adults would be a radical change! So, this type of culture would natural select Obama to design, regulate, and direct every facet of life. Our Helicopter President, saving the world, being cool, and never having a limit on what he will spend on us. Reassuring? sure.
Let’s cut to the chase: we are really in dire straits when pundits have to point to Hiltler’s accomplishments to rationalize overspending.
#24: I love the helicopter president concept. And, for different reasons, I do believe this has been an amusing set of exchanges.
It’s astounding how insecure the Obama supporters are. Afraid to ever criticize, or even calmly evaluate, their man, they lash out at any criticism and grasp at hokey historical straws.
I think they can feel the shadow on their backs: their boy has no staying power. In two years, he’ll be a joke. Meanwhile, they need to keep huffing and puffing.
So we should give them a break: they and Obama are circling the drain.
Our criteria and expectations for the good life are so much higher than they were in 1933 that it is no wonder there can never be enough government spending . After all, it has to fill the void left by the formerly gargantuan, now incredibly shrinking credit behemoth. It is safe to say that neither Keynes nor Roosevelt, Mussolini nor even Hitler had such grandiose material ambitions for the individual Englishman, American , Italian or German… as we do..
#26, yes, thank you, and i agree with your post. There seems to be a very thin balloon filled with a lot of hot air floating around in the White House. All of the Obamatons see every critique of Obama as the one thumbtack that will pop their messianic superhero, and he will become another deflated human.
DVD’s to Brown, and an ipod to the Queen. ah, those crazy college kids and their funny pranks. I hope 2010 is the year of the grownups.
I’m sorry for all my unfortunate posts. I’ve called people terrible names. Blame it on the booze…blogging while bashed, tiping while tipsy etc.
Of all people I shouldn’t be making fun of other’s names. You might think my name, OMG, stands for Oh My God. Wrong! It stands for Other Mother Goldberg. That’s right…you heard it right. That’s me, OMG.
My shrink has been trying to help me on the self-hatred issue to little avail. So, when I post here ignore everything I say. You see I’m either drunk and/or nuts.
wow, neocons feel the need to impersonate people. that is funny!!!! and sad!!! but more funny!! keep at it neocons!!!! not like everything you guys have ever believed has proven to be a lie!
Whoops! Did it again.
“maynard Says:
…For extra credit: do you doubt that several other presidents, of both parties, have asserted and exercised these prerogatives?”
Which prerogative are you speakiing of? Perhaps controlling the census from the Whitehouse to insure to insure perpetual power for the left? Perhaps, taking over the banking system and determining who gets paid what in the private sector regardless of valid private contracts?
Maybe directing Chrysler to merge with FIAT suits your central economic model of freedom?
Which one ever said that the USA will no longer impose its will upon the rest of the world while kissing the butt of the Saudi King? Which other president so openly seeks to follow European law over ours by his appointments? We won’t talk about his Christian Church of Infanticide.
“maynard Says:
…For extra credit: do you doubt that several other presidents, of both parties, have asserted and exercised these prerogatives?”
Which prerogative are you speakiing of? Perhaps controlling the census from the Whitehouse to insure to insure perpetual power for the left? Perhaps, taking over the banking system and determining who gets paid what in the private sector regardless of valid private contracts?
Maybe directing Chrysler to merge with FIAT suits your central economic model of freedom?
Which one ever said that the USA will no longer impose its will upon the rest of the world while kissing the butt of the Saudi King? Which other president so openly seeks to follow European law over ours by his appointments? We won’t talk about his Christian Church of Infanticide.
All of those historians that visit this site know that the Germans could have won second “Great War” with some better decisions (i.e. faster production of ME262 or delay of Operation Barbarossa for example).>>
I call BS on that statement. The destruction of Nazi Germany became inevitable once the Soviet Union was invaded. Any intelligent student of the era knows this. Our entry in the war speeded things up, but had we not entered (and it is possible we wouldn’t have, had Hitler not been utterly stupid and declared war on us on December 10 of ’41) the Soviets, with 4x Germany’s population, 6x her army, and 50x her land area, would eventually not only have taken Berlin, they would have taken Paris–and Dunkirk.
Furthermore, Roosevelt’s efforts WERE pointless. The Great Depression was caused by a major currency collapse; $30 of every $100 had disappeared from 1929 to 1932. Roosevelt’s efforts ignored utterly the need to reflate the dollar and depended entirely on high visibility BS programs like the “NRA” to keep poor people working on busywork rather than addressing the real underlying difficulties of the United States, namely, a nineteenth-century currency and banking system that simply no longer worked in modern conditions.
Finally, if you want to see fascism in action, watch what ACORN unleased is capable of: and tremble.
Eastpointe, MI
Great conversation, people. I am three cups of coffee short of a cogent response but has anyone pointed out the irony of Chrysler being forced to merge with a company called Fiat?
After 8 years of FDR his Treasury secretary had this to say:
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work … After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot!”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, commenting on the failures of the New Deal after two terms of FDR
It’s amusing that anyone would call the what the Nazi’s did any sort of economic miracle.By 1938, Germany was bankrupt, and they had virtually no foreign trade or reserves.So how did they propose to pay for their goodies? Why, the old fashioned Medieval way, of course.
Plunder and Pillage! They set their sights on every central bank gold reserve in Europe, and those were the big prizes in Austria and Czechoslovakia and Romania.The Nazis, on top of being brutal, were also economic morons and fraudsters who spent the 30′s cooking their books.
The Soviets did the same thing.
How exactly did the “groundwork” of the New Deal shorten the war? Was it through all the destruction of commodities and agricultural price fixing that took place? The public murals the New Deal commissioned to show the heroic proletariat American Worker in action?
The new Post Office buildings that were built? All the trees that got planted by the CCC?
What is it exactly about the New Deal that allowed the US to fight the AXIS powers?
I’ve looked, but haven’t found any evidence yet.
Thou just shalt not criticize the first New Deal. Such ctiticism could undermine the second one. That should be simple enough to understand.
How on Earth can anyone claim that The New Deal worked?
It was the longest economic downturn in American history! Nothing even comes close! FDR was President for 12 years and we didn’t get out of the downturn until many years after he died. How could anyone in their right mind possibly consider his policies a success? It’s absolutely and completely absurd!
FDR didn’t cause the Depression but he clearly prolonged it. There is absolutely nothing in the historical record to indicate that it would have gone on longer without him. The most notable thing about the Depression is how long it lasted!
Now we have three Presidents that can’t be criticized. FDR, Reagan, and, now, Obama.
42- Good thing there’s only one nation and two Pod people on the list.
Too funny. It’s “reductio ad Hitleram” to point out an Obama supporter is using…. Hitler’s policies… to defend Obama’s… in a major publication… but the people pointing it out are at fault…. double plus bad.
I think we can sum this whole thing up pretty succinctly: When government begins to believe it is ‘bigger’, ‘more powerful’ than the people it governs, a lot of bad stuff starts to happen.
The first step towards this is always the same: Making money meaningless. Not borrowing. printing or stealing it – those are the causes of making it meaningless. Any society only has so much money – the difference between what it produces and what it consumes – hopefully the difference is positive. The last step is always the same: War. War is the only true instrument a government has to impact this production/consumption balance because it is the only mechanism that consumes at a fast enough rate. War is the only acitvity in which things (men, consumables and products) are created with the explicit intent of being destroyed before their ‘useful’ life. It is the only mechanism a government has that directly creates enough demand.
Of course, governments who understand their role to be in support of the people – not rulers of them, understand that there are ups and downs in the economic cycle that they cannot and should not control. People will turn their productive capacity to other things – food production, cars, electricity, computers, cell phones, etc. It is interesting to note that government created exactly none of these things. They were all created by people looking for something to do. Of course we did get the atom bomb – and its much innovated and much more powerful cousin – the thermonuclear hydrodgen bomb from a bunch of really smart people working directly (forced?) for the government. So we got that going for us.
NYT writer endorses fascist economics!…
Sounds like a crazy headline, doesn’t it? Something written by a black helicopter-fearing loony from his underground bunker somewhere in the mountains? Yet that’s exactly what author David Leonhardt did last week when writing about President Obama’s…