This is a nonsensical argument. Under Reagan, we saw the growth of government as a percentage of GDP stop for the first time in decades. [p/quote]
This makes absolutely no sense. Reaganism saw the largest expansion of the federal budget up to that time and he tripled the deficit in one term.
WheelsRCool said:
9/11, hmm...so Clinton had nothing to do with this considering much of the planning for this occurred during his own administration? 9/11 could not have occurred during the Clinton Administration? This is simplistic thinking.
No, Clinton had nothing to do with it.
WheelsRCool said:
FDR never "pulled" us out of anything. His New Deal was a disaster of epic proportions that only lengthened and deepened the Great Depression. It allowed violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, food to rot, and when income taxes were significantly raised in 1932, going from 25% to 63%, the real GDP dropped by 13.3% and unemployment rose from 15.9% to 23.6%.
We've already been over this. You have not been able to provide a SINGLE, MAINSTREAM source for this claim.
Because the GDP only dropped ONCE during his term but he had an average growth rate that was one of the fastest in US history. Certainly the average GDP growth rate was higher under FDR than it was under Reagan. (Keep in mind when an economy drops to the extent it did in the great depression, it's hard for it to recover.)
You either misinterpret the data provided in the other thread -- with explanation of GDP prior to the Great Depression, and up to World War II -- or are deliberately making things up. There is no other explanation.
And by the way the New Deal programs didn't even start until 1933, not in 1932, and a recovery began almost immediately.
The New Deal was a great growth rate, and it, the economy skyrocketted and the US had more stability and a progressive economy for its longest period in history, while taxing the rich at a very high rate, certainly higher than now.
WheelsRCool said:
While accusing other people of engaging in "junk scholarship," you yourself seem to have no problem refusing to read books recommended with a viewpoint alternate to your own regarding economics and fascism. If that isn't "junk scholarship," I do not know what is.
That's because they are still scholars in the academic sense. Paxton, who I cited in that "fascism" thread, was a scholar. The other thing I was referencing was a paper published by the University of Barcelona, both scholarly sources.
And so on. The vast amount of historians and even economists disagree with you.
WheelsRCool said:
BTW, you once said that Jonah Goldberg, author of "Liberal Fascism," had "no qualifications." Yet you recommend the book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," written by a man with the same level of qualifications as Goldberg. He too was a journalist.
He was a journalist, but, he had access to the Nazi archives (opened up after World War II), he lived in Nazi Germany, and generally he cites relevant Nazi documents and policy when making his claims (like a real historian does). His only agenda was also to expose Nazi Germany, and how it functioned.
Sure, there are problems with his book. But it's easy enough to find evidence to support his general themes.
By contrast Goldberg is a popular writer appealing to Conservatives in much the same way Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly does, he is not a scholarly source. I only cited him to give an overview of the Nazi Charter of Labor as well and it's pro-corporatism as well.
WheelsRCool said:
Nor did Clinton pull us out of any "mess" from Reagan (the recession was actually because Bush Sr. had increased taxes, not anything from Reagan).
He certainly did. He reversed the enormous, federal deficit that Reagan had accumulated, thus helping to curb in flation in the US.
He generally tried to fund certain industries to get them going, rather than bailing out failed ones to the tune of 500 billion dollars like Reagan did.
He also didn't have the US involved in illegal, secret wars across Latin America and he didn't trade arms with official US enemies in order to launder blood money to the contras.
WheelsRCool said:
President Bush inherited an economy bordering on recession after Clinton, and he cut taxes, which helped prevent it; it did technically enter a "recession," but it was the smallest recession we've ever had if you consider it that.
Sources? Evidence? The only thing Bush's tax cuts did is help to reverse the progress Clinton had made in reducing the Federal deficit.
A three year old could tell you that when you don't have enough money coming in, you'll eventually reverse course and wind up in the red again.
WheelsRCool said:
This book is riddled with lies and misconceptions about various things. Read up on some of the criticism of her work.
Such as? And I don't want a link to the Lew Rockwell institute.
It's well known history capitalism was implemented after disasterous "shocks" in the Third world and rammed through time and time again.
This is also why free-market policies have been rejected by many in the third world, even causing riots and rebellions from time to time.
Again, it's easy to provide a list of Latin American shoclars who've noted all this - and one was provided last time we had this debate. (Grandin et al.)
You have not been able to combat any of the actual facts I presented, you've only made vague references to Libertarians and Libertarian like beliefs - who only make up about 15% of economists (the majority of whom are "progressive" and in economics when a policy hurts the poor while benefiting the rich, it's called a "regressive" action, such as tax increases the poorest 15% experienced under the Reagan regime), and who have less than 1% precense in all the other social sciences and humanities.
Libertarians, like Civil War revisionists, are a small, tiny minority in academia and scholarship, including in the "dismal science" of economics, and are not meant to be taken seriously. I assume that they're smart enough to know what they write is propaganda.
As Paul Krugman said, a mainstream economist, there are no atheists in the Fox Holes, there are no Libertarians in financial crises. (He means the real world, not the forum at the von Mises homepage.)
And yah, that's true. Deregulation (and that's why these institutions were making these spurious loans) has once again driven the economy into the ground and it'll take massive government to fix it.
