Steve Austria (R-OH) Doesn’t Know When the Depression Happened
Austrian economics (pardon the pun) continues to take over the Republican Party:
U.S. Rep. Steve Austria said he supports a scaled-down federal economic-stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.
“When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,” Austria said. “He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”
Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.
Probabilities indicate that this is not the stupidest conservative in congress.
104 Responses to “Steve Austria (R-OH) Doesn’t Know When the Depression Happened”
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February 11th, 2009 at 11:57 am
One Austrian idea is that responding to the downturn is made more difficult by mismatch of available labor skills with patterns of capital investment — successful stimulus requires some matching of labor skills with stimulus outlays, and that’s not simple. May I suggest that the crop of Austrian GOP members of Congress represent the set of labor skills for which no useful capital investment is possible or desirable.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
How do these people keep getting elected?
February 11th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
bdbd:
If only they had left the funding for re-sodding the Mall in there.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
More up-is-downism from the GOP. It can’t be said often enough that the Republicans wrecked the economy in 1929, and Democrats fixed it (though the fix was long and difficult). Last year, Republicans wrecked the economy again.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
“Probabilities indicate that this is not the stupidest conservative in congress.”
I’ve often thought Virginia Foxx the stupidest member of Congress; it could be, however, that she is merely in the top 5 but really vocal. It is difficult to tell.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
It wasnt’ a Great Depression until FDR got his hands on it, so Austria is right. He’s not saying FDR’s spending preceded the Great Depression, but was contemporary with the Great Depression, which FDR caused. It’s not necessary to precede to cause.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I know that guy from high school! He was always skipping history class to go smoke pot behind the school.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
To point out the obvious here as well, the problem isn’t that Austria doesn’t know when the Depression started, the problem is that he does know when it started. And that FDR’s policies made things better, and that the Shlaes revisionism is a bunch of bullshit. And because he knows all of that, he totally mangled the talking point he was supposed to throw out, that the New Deal made everything worse. If he actually believed that, he would have been able to nail it, but he doesn’t, so he mangles it into something that even the Republican friendly Dispatch can’t pretend is an arguable point (although I guess they sort of tried). This is the conservative movement’s communication apparatus in a nutshell, and you get these sort of really dumb statements every now and then when someone messes up the lie they’re supposed to be telling.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Is he dumber than the radio hack who didn’t know what “appeasement” meant?
February 11th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
You’d like to think so, but he’s my rep, and I live in Clark County, OH. I’m still apologizing for 2000, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is the bottom of the barrel.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Hopefully Dr. Rudy Wells and Oscar Goldman can rebuild Steve Austria better than before. Stronger. Faster. Less dumb.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
It wasnt’ a Great Depression until FDR got his hands on it, so Austria is right. He’s not saying FDR’s spending preceded the Great Depression, but was contemporary with the Great Depression, which FDR caused. It’s not necessary to precede to cause.
Wait, what?
February 11th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Gabriel, his point is that FDR inherited a depression, which he proceeded to make Great.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Thanks Thomas I was having trouble following my own argument . . .
February 11th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Gabriel,
I’m a bit confused by bjk too. Up until the last sentence, he seemed like your standard ultraconservative fabulist indulging in one of their favorite fantasies. Then he discards the idea of cause preceding effect, and I think he might be satire. It’s a tough call.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
It wasnt’ [sic] a Great Depression until FDR got his hands on it, so Austria is right.
…his point is that FDR inherited a depression, which he proceeded to make Great.
There’s an assertion I’d love to see evidence for. My understanding is that unemployment improved significantly in almost every year of FDR’s presidency, but I’m just relying on empirical data, so what do I know?
I guess making Shlaes look sane and brilliant by comparison is a bold strategy. Might just work.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
“It wasn’t a Great Depression until FDR got his hands on it”
NOT TRUE. The economy bottomed out in 1933, around the time that FDR took office. It was never again as bad.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
My understanding is that unemployment improved significantly in almost every year of FDR’s presidency, but I’m just relying on empirical data, so what do I know?
It’s a liberal myth, like global warming, evolution, and the big-bang theory.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Actually, FDR caused the Great Depression by pumping into circulation millions of dimes with his face on them.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
R-UH R-OH
February 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
This is the problem when you feed a bullshit ideological posture — the Amity Shlaes line — to members of the House, who are generally Not That Smart. You end up with the mendacious garbled into incoherence.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
FDR’s policies led to a sharp reduction in leisure time, and significant increases in the stress involved in dealing with a larger economy.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
This is the Party of Palin.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Gabriel, his point is that FDR inherited a depression, which he proceeded to make Great.
Well, that part is just wrong, but I understood that much. It’s the part where he claimed that causes don’t have to come before effects that confused me.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I tried to email the Representative and help clarify his confusion, but you can only email him through his campaign office. If you are not from Ohio it’s hard to contact him without providing false address information.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Jeez, 25 posts, and no one has even acknowledged that most of us voted for a Vice President who made essentially the same mistake? (I assume you all didn’t vote McCain-Palin.)
And Biden even compounded it by saying that Roosevelt went on TV when the stock market crashed.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
What’s next? When Lincoln freed the slaves that’s what started the Civil War?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
And the Great Depression only ended because the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor…
February 11th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Jeez, 25 posts, and no one has even acknowledged that most of us voted for a Vice President who made essentially the same mistake? (I assume you all didn’t vote McCain-Palin.)
Nah. Momentarily confusing the stock market crash of 1929 with the bank panics of 1933 isn’t the same thing as making an argument on causation that depends upon facts that aren’t close to being true.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Is this one of those things that Republicans just say for argumentitive reasons, or is it one of their genuine crazy beliefs?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Njorl,
I think for decades there were republicans saying these things for argumentive reasons and now a whole generation of people like the good Rep from Ohio have grown up actually believeing them
February 11th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
It’s not necessary to precede to cause.
I’m not sure I get this. Are you saying that FDR caused the Great Depression while Hoover was President, got elected, and then began spending money independently of the Great Depression? Or are you saying that the Crash of 1929 at first didn’t happen, but then Roosevelt defeated Hoover and began spending money, causing the Crash of 1929 to happen retroactively? Is time travel involved? Please tell me you’re not one of those creepy Heinlein fans who gets off on people who travel through time so they can engage in incest with their ancestors.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Probably what turned the recession that would have inevitably followed the stock market crash in 1929 was the various bank runs and panics that followed from 1929 to 1933. Of course, Roosevelt and the New Deal had nothing to do with any of that, but I doubt any Republican knows that, or even what a bank run is, anyway.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I’m very disappointed that “Steve Austria is an imbecile” doesn’t return any on-point results in Google. I wonder if that could be fixed.
In fairness to Amity Shlaes, though, we should note that, since Austria got this theory from Amity Shlaes, before proceeding to exponentially ramp up the stupid on his own, it wasn’t really Imbecility until Austria got his hands on it. Austria inherited stupidity, which he then proceeded to make Imbecility.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I believe Njorl is probably right. Used as a talkingpoint for so ong that young people like Austria actually believe it.
None of these brainiacs are able to explain why, after Roosevelt was first elected in 1932, he was elected President 3 more times. Do they suppose that the entire nation was as stupid as the people who elected them to Congress.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
He’s since recanted, with more lies!
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/11/copy/AUSTRIA_RECANTS.ART_ART_02-11-09_B8_0PCS8TG.html?adsec=politics&sid=101
February 11th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
bjk,
I found your clue. Here you go.
Get a clue.
FDR came into office in early 1933. Look at the graph. Look at it!
February 11th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I want to know the reaction of the editorial board. Did they manage not to laugh in his face? Did anyone correct him? Do the columnists have blogs with comment sections?
February 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
What’s really striking about that graph is that during the time FDR was, as Austria says, “borrowing and spending” (1933-1937, 1938-1945), the economy not only grew, but grew at a rate as dramatic as the decline between 1929 and 1933.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Toledo had 80 percent unemployment, b4 FDR stepped into office. Chicago was besieged w/crime. After FDR came to power in one year Chicago’s crime went down by half.
FDR CCC planted over 3 billion trees (they don’t call it the Dirty Thirties for nothing deforestation was a huge problem). FDR was able to high 246,000 in 4 months (for the tree/ river department).
I will say this about Hoover, he was 10 time better person than any of our current Republicans. He was able to help 700k Americans who suffered from a huge flood, waaaaay faster than Bush could or would have. Hoover just hung on to his ideology.
FDR was non-ideological, he just kept doing new things (if something failed). The big mistake, was that the economist thought that you couldn’t grow the economy at that time, you could only redistribute things. So that’s what FDR focused on at the beginning.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
when i was in grade school, maybe even high school, i learned about reconstruction. it seems that after lincoln was assassinated, the “radical” republicans undertook a campaign to punish the south. when i got older and read a little more, i learned that what made the republicans so radical was that they expected freed slaves to take a place of equality in southern society. i suppose that was indeed a radical thought at the time.
what’s the point? well, sometimes the history books get it a little wrong. if someone comes along and presents evidence that the mainstream take on historical events may be a little off, you can confront them on the facts or you can respond by casting aspersions on people’s intelligence and dismissing them as crazy. i see which avenue most of you have chosen.
when did the dominant mode of left-wing debate move from righteous indignation to derisive snark? we now have a nation of john stewart and steve colbert clones ready to unleash their passive-aggressive sarcasm on anyone who dares disagree. fine, FDR rode in on his big white horse and saved the world from the evil, greedy republicans. you all win. congratulations.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Blah
But neither is as dumb as the Republican vice presidential candidate that didn’t know what “The Bush Doctrine.”
February 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
JR
You are hilarious. Maybe you should hang out with real people (whatever side of the politico) more often. Snarky derision is how almost every American responds to anything they don’t like. Liberals usually get to make fun of the intelligence of the offender, typically because the thing being made fun of is so insanely stupid. Conservatives like to call liberals stupid all the time (Ann Coulter anyone?) and have the annoying belief that they are more patriotic than liberals so often like to include gems like un-American, un-patriotic and their favorite curse word: LIBERAL. Remember when liberal was just the opposition? Now we are the political equivalent of a racial slur.
So I’m going to make fun of you and your stupid point of view. And you can continue to whine like a baby. Or maybe you should just realize that no-one likes you and America is tired of your party and your politics.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
It’s not necessary to precede to cause.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. “After this therefore caused by this” is the fallacy that just because event A preceded event B it does not follow that A caused B.
However, that is not the same as saying that C which really did caused B did not have to occur before B. Almost everyone, except certain mystics and super string theorists, agree that causes precede effects.
Now if FDR could travel faster than the speed of light, well then all bets would be off.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
@ brian,
so you’re response is: ann coulter does it, so i’m going to do it too.
way to aim high. and thanks for helping make my point.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Question for conservatives who believe this tripe: What did put an end to the Depression?
Of course, their answer is World War II — and they’re right.
But why did World War II end the Depression?
Because the government put spending into armaments. It bought guns, bombs, jeeps, tanks, etc. from businesses, and the businesses hired workers to produce them. That’s no different from putting spending into any other sector of the economy — you can build bridges or you can build guns, but in both cases the government is buying.
And, of course, during World War II, the government “hired” millions of able bodied workers — for the army. They got paid directly by the government and left the unemployment rolls. That’s no different than hiring people in the CCC to plant trees.
So, ultimately, the entire argument breaks down: even if you ignore the evidence and believe that Roosevelt’s spending didn’t help, WWII shows that government spending ended the Depression. Period.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
what’s the point? well, sometimes the history books get it a little wrong. if someone comes along and presents evidence that the mainstream take on historical events may be a little off, you can confront them on the facts or you can respond by casting aspersions on people’s intelligence and dismissing them as crazy.
Suppose an Ohio Congressman said in a speech that Pearl Harbor was bombed by Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces in 1945, and that this is why he opposes U.S. recognition of Taiwan. Next, suppose a Columbus newspaper reports on this speech, and reports that Pearl Harbor scholars generally believe that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese in 1941, but was not bombed by foreign powers in 1945 and was never bombed by Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces. Then, suppose you read this article in the newspaper.
Would you:
(a) Think, “my God, is that guy deranged, or just a moron?”
(b) Gather up as much primary evidence as you can to support the notion that Pearl Harbor was really bombed in 1941 by the Japanese, just to make sure that historians haven’t been blowing smoke all this while. (”Grampa, you were a young man in 1941, right? Do you have any newspapers from December 8? Can you prove that they aren’t forgeries?”)
I would think most people would say (a). There are some things that if you get wrong, even if you’re “close” (off by four years, identifying not the primary actor but an entity that was physically nearby but on the opposite side), you are not entitled to a respectful discussion as to whether it might be the history books that are wrong. American troops were not fired on at Lexington and Concord by French soldiers in 1772. Columbus did not cross the Atlantic in 1488 on behalf of the Portuguese crown. Robert E. Lee did not surrender to Stonewall Jackson at Appomatox Court House in 1861. The first city to be hit with an atomic bomb was not Vladivostok in 1949. Kaiser Wilhelm was not shot in Sarajevo in 1910. And the Great Depression did not begin in 1933 as a result of FDR’s policies.
I will say, though, that you do a pretty decent job of passive-aggressive snark when you castigate liberals for snarking passive-aggressively. Less passive, more snark, and you might be entertaining, though still wrong.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
“Now if FDR could travel faster than the speed of light, well then all bets would be off.”
He would have needed to install a flux capacitor in his wheel chair to pull that one off….
to soon?
/likes FDR
February 11th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
JR.
Thanks for continuing to whine. My point is not that you do it so I can too. It’s that THAT IS THE WAY OF THE WORLD AND IF YOU ARE GOING TO PUT YOUR SILLY OPINION OUT THERE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO MOCK IT YOU SILLY BABY!
But thanks for being you.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Go figure.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Neither did Charlie Gibson. Neither did you.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
This will be repeated as true by Rush Limbaugh, then Faux News, The Wall Street Journal and back to Rush Limbaugh.
Around and around in the Reich-wing echo chamber.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Jim Treacher Says: Mother, May I Sleep with Treacher?
Treacher what a gutless coward, you don’t even allow comments on your “echo chamber” blog… and you post yours on this site as if it is your right.
So here’s this:
“Here’s his idea of a debate:
Obama: I won.
Anybody who disagrees with Obama: Oh.
End of debate!”
Hell yeah, the Republican party is not conservative, they are authoritarian and is how they governed.
And that is how they will govern again, no question.
Now go back to Obama bashing on your echo chamber blog wimp.
Back to being the harmless but annoying crank you are.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Maybe he’s just trying to cheer us up?
Thanks, that made my day.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Left this, right that. How futile is it to bash one party with the other? If one were stronger than the other, as a baseball bat to a watermelon, something might get accomplished. But no, the parties are of similar strength, so it’s more like bashing a 5-7 year old tree with a baseball bat. You can spend all day trying to do damage to the tree, but the bat takes just as much as it gives.
It’s high time that people stop attacking each other over opposing sides of issues, when the issues themselves have a cause.
Did FDR get us out of the Depression? No, the jobs he created were not careers and were not sustainable.
Did FDR cause the Depression? No. Did Hoover? Yes, through inaction. The true cause of the Depression can be traced back to the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the money supply. Easy money brought us the roaring 20’s with a check to pay at the end. Since then we’ve also abandoned the gold standard completely and amassed a national debt that we haven’t been able to pay the service to for a few years now.
Stop with the D vs R and let’s get to fixing things.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Did FDR get us out of the Depression? No, the jobs he created were not careers and were not sustainable. … Stop with the D vs R and let’s get to fixing things.
“Accept my premises, and then you’ll be glad to follow me!”
February 11th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Forgive me for the ad hominum attack.
However, Steve Austria looks a little like Alfred E. Neuman without the freckles.
Oh well. What me worry?
DWN
February 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Steve Austria clearly doesn’t remember that FDR got on TV and calmed the nation after the stock market crash in 1929, and that marked the beginning of the great depression. Stop by the Naval Observatory for some history tutoring whenever you want, kiddo.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I can’t imagine how anyone can think how the Republican party would be looking out for the average worker… they are the party of rich, white males and billionaire predatory control freaks like Rupert Murdock.
The want Big Business to tell what’s best for the the worker, just like Walmart does.
And they just hate Social Security… remember Bush trying to privatize social security when the stock market was at all time highs?
Social Security would have all been wiped out today, chalked off as an another Bush Disaster.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I also go to bars and restaurants sometimes, even though I don’t own one. But I’m glad you reminded me of my rights, or lack thereof.
I can only aspire to your level of intellectual prowess.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
“they are the party of rich, white males and billionaire predatory control freaks like Rupert Murdock.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are the party of “rich, white males and billionaire predatory control freaks” like Ted Turner, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, etc. I’d venture that there are more billionaires who vote Democrat than Republican.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Like I said, Social Security… imagine Social Security now if Bush and the Republicans would have been successful in privatizing it.
Oh yeah and Republitugs hate the environment, they hate teh gays, woman’s right, CIVIL RIGHTS, actors and artist (see, An American Tale for right-wing “art” aka propaganda), they don’t care about cruelty to animals, religious tolerance, or the air you breathe ( they fought emissions standards tooth and nail), or even clean water… first thing Bush did was to raise he Arsenic levels in drinking water, the list goes on and on.
I can see why you don’t allow comments on your site Treacher… you like to dish it out, but can’t take it can you wimp?
If your blog were dog food, it would be removed from the shelves.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I suspect that in retrospect the Republican party will rue the advent of its current favorite Fleet Street deportee, Amity Schlaes.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Really, first thing Bush did in office, with the majority of Republicans on board was try to put more Arsenic in the drinking water.
You can’t make this stuff up… those were the good old days right, wingnuts?
http://www.citizen.org/congress/regulations/issue_areas/enviro_protections/articles.cfm?ID=8368
February 11th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
God what an idiot. The depression began after world war 1 for large areas of the US, all of the US, in 1929 and only got worse while the do nothing Hoover was in office. Roosevelt took office in 1933 and Keynes did not write his book until 1936. The only creatures dimmer than this creature are the dimwitted that voted for it.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Oh Treacher, you’re such a virtual stud on the Internets.
I tremble at your posts.
How much to you bench in real life, 125 or so?
I’ll bet you have a cute double chin like limbaugh, beck, o’rly, dobbs and the rest of he Riech-wing fatties that have NEVER SERVED.
February 11th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
David,
Pray tell, what unit did you serve in and what was your military occupational specialty?
February 11th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Not only does this idiot look stupid, he’s even dumber than he looks!
I’m just hoping that Ted Kennedy survives office longer than this moron.
How much worse would it possibly be if there were only Democrats in Congress?
Couldn’t be much worse than it is now, with so many stupid republicans taking up space in the House and Senate.
And as far as Ted Kennedy goes, I pray daily that he outlives Rush Limbaugh!
February 11th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
And I at yours, friend.
February 12th, 2009 at 1:35 am
This man is a Republicant. The Republicants are many in the hallowed halls of Congress.
They disguise themselves as Republicans, fiscal minded protectors of free enterprise. However, they are false!
This last election, the Republicant faction ran wild under the skin of the elephant. When they sensed unease from the base, the quickly chose a frontier lady to dress up their commander.
It did not work, and the Grand Illusionist of Democratia was victorious.
The Republicants were defeated from within as many sat out the ritual.
Now, the Repulicans will rise again, and drive the ‘cants back into their roles of onlooker and hand wringer.
For the man of Steele has come to deliver us.
Take note citizens of Democratia, you think your house is in order, but she is divided worse than ours. Pelosius and Reid Iculos are united only in their hate of Hillary, whom they are stripping of her official powers, as of this writing.
To that end, the Grand Illusionist has also handicapped her, by sending his manservant, Joeseph NoToungeBiden, in her place to land of Stan’s angry blankets.
Your Grand Illusionist was made into an hypcrite, as he proclaimed he would “End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors” while the legislation of paybacks in disguise took place, behind closed doors.
Know this, denizens of Democratia, I, a true warrior of the Elephant, do not wish your victory. However, I do wish you to elect leaders far better than Reid Iculos and Pelosius.
For only if your house advances leaders of quality, and not fozzie bear screaming madmen, will mine ever again realize they must deliver more than these sweater vests devoid of reason, decisiveness, and moral clarity.
Not to mention, getting the Great F***ing Depression Wrong.
Was it not Joseph NoToungueBiden who said President Roosevelt
went on TV in 1929?
Let us elevate these contests to fire for fire, and no longer turd for turd.
(In closing, the poor Republicant above was most likely referring to a combined effect of Smoot-Hawley and some of FDRs later protectionism. Too bad he scewed the pooch. Does it not make the denizens of Democratia wonder whom he defeated?)
February 12th, 2009 at 4:24 am
I want to see a birth certificate. No way is “Steve Austria” really this guy’s name.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Don’t know why anyone posted a comment after DTM won the Internet with the very first one.
Made my morning.
February 12th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I agree that this guy does not know what he is talking about, but you cannot judge all conservatives based on one idiot. You cannot honestly state that conservative economic ideas are wrong. Reagan fixed the economy in a year, and the economy was worse than it is now. He did it with tax cuts, deregulation, anti-inflation, and control of government spending. It cost around an estimated 100 billion dollars versus the 1.5 trillion we have have recently spent on the two bailouts. Why spend an unnecessary amount of money, that may fix the economy granted, but in a much more costly manner and roundabout way. Cut taxes and the people will instantly put that money in the economy. The government would be saving 1.4 TRILLION dollars of its money for those of you who cant add, which by the way is a tenth of the debt we already had. But in all means lets keep spending and bailing out according to the liberal ideals, when the liberal ideas are in reality what caused the economic downfall in the first place. Everyone needs a house, even though they cant afford it; liberal ideas are the essence of why the banks lent risky loans.
It will fix itself.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Hey look guys! Brett found that lost talking points book! Hopefully he forwarded it over to Congressional Republicans after he got done reading a few random lines for us. Thanks Brett!
Reagan fixed an economy worse than what we have now in less than a year… thats good stuff. you guys really do like to create your own little worlds full of seamless facts that fit together nicely but have no basis in observable reality.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Oh, and I read this entry to a friend of mine who teaches, among other things, logic at a university:
It wasnt’ a Great Depression until FDR got his hands on it, so Austria is right. He’s not saying FDR’s spending preceded the Great Depression, but was contemporary with the Great Depression, which FDR caused. It’s not necessary to precede to cause.
We think you are an idiot. If you had just made the stupid statement that “It’s not necessary to precede to cause.”, we might have overlooked it as simply speaking without thinking. But the fact that you first go into a full argument which can only be true if time travel is involved… well either you are way ahead of the game and are anticipating a paradigm change concerning our basic metaphysical assumptions such as causality… or you really should just not talk in the public sphere, it would cause a lot less people to laugh and point at you.
Oh, and heres a clue. You saying stupid things was not caused by, nor was it contemporary with, us laughing at you.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I would say you do more bashing than actually making a point, then again I only take seamless facts and put them together. If you knew anything about economics you would know that economists have predicted and PROVEN that the economy goes in cycles. They used to say it happened every 50 years, they changed in the 90’s to every thirty years. That means that every thirty years there will be a “depression.” This is FACT. The Great Depression happened around 1930, add fifty years and you have 1980 another economic downturn. Add thirty years and you have 2010, now. The Great Depression was not solved with FDR’s New Deal Acts, it was solved by WWII, which kick started the economy. The economy solved itself. In 1980, it was solved by Reagan not solving. He deregulated and cut taxes. He cut inflation to one quarter of what it was (13.2% to 3.2%) in two years. The economy solved itself. Your argument “you guys really do like to create your own little worlds full of seamless facts that fit together nicely but have no basis in observable reality” does not work here. This is fact, and if you do not think so i do not know if you know the definition of fact. Now answer me this Jay:
Why would we not try something that worked before first, then something that has failed (the Great Depression, but for the sake of argument, Bush’s last bank bailout) multiple times. I get the impression that you are a smart guy; is this not common sense?
February 13th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Brett Campbell:
“The Great Depression was not solved with FDR’s New Deal Acts, it was solved by WWII, which kick started the economy. The economy solved itself.”
… The economy solved itself? WTF?
Before you blather on about things you clearly haven’t thought through, ask yourself this: Why did WWII “solve” the economy? What does this say about the necessary size of a spending program that might actually make up for over a trillion dollars in lost demand? (And you can leave aside the role FDR took in moving us out of our isolationist stance and toward involvement in the war. Really. I wouldn’t want you to be more confused than you already seem to be.)
Take your time. Think about it. Get back to us.
To Brett, jr and the rest of you revisionists, selectively picking data, spinning them into ideologically-motivated talking points, and then whining that people respond with snark and derision: If you show up with a big red nose, a shiny jumpsuit with pom-pom buttons, and huge floppy shoes, don’t be surprised if people treat you like a fucking clown.
February 13th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I guess I am not understanding. You say he moved us towards the war. Yes he did. But if the war had not happened would FDR’s spending have solved the economy? My opinion is no, since it had not worked for 8 years already. We have different opinions. Honestly though the only argument James or Jay has made against me is that i “selectively pick data, spinning it into ideologically-motivated talking points.” That is not a valid argument. Hate to “whine” about you responding with “snark and derision.”
February 13th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Ha ha! Who needs facts when truthiness feels so much better in the belly, Brett?
So they happen every 50 years, except when they happen every 30 years. Yeah, once makes a pattern. Hey, look at my lucky penny, it comes up heads every second flip. Oh, now it’s every third flip. No, wait, back to every second flip. And sometimes twice in a row. I’m off to Vegas….
… in bjk’s time machine, which you seem to have borrowed! Now I have to go and throw out all my calendars that seem to have been misprinted “2009″.
So if the depression was due in 2010, I guess Bush’s reckless tax cuts & deregulations actually hastened it by several years. Wow, what a legacy!
Perhaps he just needed a little more of Reagan’s “solving by not solving”. (Until today, I had never pegged Ronnie as a Taoist).
And I love this breathtaking illogic:
Yeah, nothing cures an economic funk like being bombed by a foreign empire. Just ask Afghanistan or Iraq!
The only reason WWII “kick started the economy” was because the US had huge rafts of government money available to spend creating jobs (troops) and buying goods (materiel). Pearl Harbor gave FDR the excuse to take the gloves off and institute a real spend-heavy stimulus package. (Would that be why he ignored warnings the attack was coming?) Spend tax money to help the jobless, no way, but spend it to kill Japs? Hooyeah!
Look at England for your miracle war curative. German attacks didn’t do much to help them – they had food rationing right into the mid 1950s. But they’d already come out of the Great Depression before the Yanks – through massive government stimulus spending on war preparations begun in 1936. (I guess by winger logic, that means Hitler’s attacks of 1940 actually caused the Conservative actions that ended their depression by 1937).
All I really don’t know if these are facts, or PROVEN FACT. (I haven’t mastered the truth-making power of capitalization yet).
February 19th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Hanfuzzy: You are a typical ill informed idiot
February 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Brett @ 78.
I am a smart guy, and thank you for noticing. Now then, I cant help but find your reasoning a bit confused and contradictory. You have said a few times that the economy is naturally cyclical, and that it will fix itself. But then you go on to say that the great depression was solved by WWII kickstarting the economy. Well, naturally cyclical implies that it will continue having this pattern by its very nature, and that outside causes and solutions are irrelevant. Your inductive reasoning is flawed and dangerous here, it allows you to take the blame from the actual causes, and ignore the solutions. To make a statement like “a depression happened 20 years ago, and 30 years before that, and 50 years before that, therefore another depression will naturally happen in about 20-60 years and it will naturally solve itself” is entirely unjustified. Depressions have real causes and require real solutions, and the causes and solutions are much more complicated than your silly reductionist argument allows. The things which you claim (in all capitol letters) as PROVEN and FACT are in fact neither. They are simply selective observations which you are using to reach an unjustified conclusion.
Completly unrelated, I have a stone which keeps away lions. It is entirely natural, although the effects are cyclical. But naturally cyclical! For 350 days a year, no lions! Nevermind that the times when the stone stops working is around the time i plan my anual trip to Africa to kick wild baby lions. Interested Brett?
But anyway back to this nonsense about WWII. Yes, of course WWII helped jumpstart the economy. Why do you think that is? Was it the conservative tax cuts for businesses? Was it because government spending was cut? Or was it because money was poured into our economy because of our governments sudden need for the means to fight a war? Your reasoning is that we shouldnt stimulate into the economy because that didnt work for FDR (although most would consider that to be a lie. Look at comment 38 and follow the link. Notice what happened between FDR taking office in 1933 and our entry to WWII in 1941), but that we should leave the economy alone because it will fix itself like WWII did? So WWII was a natural event in our economy as a means to fix the great depression, which also didnt involve a massive stimulus to the economy? Thats some nice revisionist and reductionist history you got goin on there Brett.
You seem confused my friend. And claiming that we should do nothing so that the economy can naturally correct itself just like it always does is certainly going to earn you a lot of snark and derision. FDR didnt cause the great depression. FDR did help dig us out of it by stimulating the economy, and WWII certainly also got our economy going by stimulating it. You not wanting these things to be true and claiming that the economy is a naturaly cyclical entity which corrects itself automatically based on your highly flawed inductive reasoning will not change these observable facts. For the sake of everybody living in the real world, lets hope nobody starts listening to you.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:54 am
It is likely that he was referring to Theodore Roosevelt, not FDR, given that you inserted “Franklin” yourself where he only said “Roosevelt.”
Teddy incurred gross deficit spending riding on the tails of the Spanish-American War, which did precipitate the Great Depression. I do not know the details or merits of this argument that he made, but his history is correct, your making an assumption for the public is not.
Isn’t politics hilarious? In the end it doesn’t matter what a congressional party has to say about this or that President. Each president takes a seat at an on-going chess game and none of them want to lose, and none of them have the luxury of resetting the board. This predicts that each President will follow quite closely the policies of his predecessor, just as any chess tactician would be forced to do, considering the game is already in full sway.
This is a fact almost universally forgotten. No President desires to preside over the decline and demise of American power. This is evidenced by Obama’s retention of Bush’s foreign policy and war advisors and appointment of a Clinton as head of DoS — the Clinton’s know a lot about foreign policy, and so did Bush. He’s gather smart people to his table, just like Bush did, just like Clinton did, just like the elder Bush did, and so on…
It is important to remember that this does not indicate a conspiracy; rather it indicates sound strategy making.
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