Obamanomics, retreading the past with the same results

[Fieldmouse]

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2011

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Ominous Parallels

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*********** People are beginning to compare Barack Obama’s administration to the failed administration of Jimmy Carter, but a better comparison is to the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s and '40s. Let’s look at it with the help of a publication from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Foundation for Economic Education titled “Great Myths of the Great Depression,” by Dr. Lawrence Reed.

*********** During the first year of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, he called for increasing federal spending to $10 billion while revenues were only $3 billion. Between 1933 and 1936, government expenditures rose by more than 83 percent. Federal debt skyrocketed by 73 percent. Roosevelt signed off on legislation that raised the top income tax rate to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. Hillsdale College economics historian and professor Burt Folsom, author of “New Deal or Raw Deal?”, notes that in 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a 99.5 percent marginal tax rate on all incomes more than $100,000. When a top adviser questioned the idea, Roosevelt replied, “Why not?”

*********** Roosevelt had other ideas for the economy, including the National Recovery Act. Dr. Reed says: “The economic impact of the NRA was immediate and powerful. In the five months leading up to the act’s passage, signs of recovery were evident: factory employment and payrolls had increased by 23 and 35 percent, respectively. Then came the NRA, shortening hours of work, raising wages arbitrarily and imposing other new costs on enterprise. In the six months after the law took effect, industrial production dropped 25 percent.”

*********** Blacks were especially hard hit by the NRA. Black spokesmen and the black press often referred to the NRA as the "***** Run Around," *****es Rarely Allowed," "*****es Ruined Again," "*****es Robbed Again," "No Roosevelt Again" and the "***** Removal Act." Fortunately, the courts ruled the NRA unconstitutional. As a result, unemployment fell to 14 percent in 1936 and lower by 1937.

*********** Roosevelt had more plans for the economy, namely the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the “Wagner Act.” This was a payoff to labor unions, and with these new powers, labor unions went on a militant organizing frenzy that included threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, widespread violence and other acts that pushed productivity down sharply and unemployment up dramatically. In 1938, Roosevelt’s New Deal produced the nation’s first depression within a depression. The stock market crashed again, losing nearly 50 percent of its value between August 1937 and March 1938, and unemployment climbed back to 20 percent. Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote in March 1938 that “with almost no important exception every measure (Roosevelt) has been interested in for the past five months has been to reduce or discourage the production of wealth.”

*********** Roosevelt’s agenda was not without its international admirers. The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” and “the development toward an authoritarian state” based on the “demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.” Roosevelt himself called Benito Mussolini “admirable” and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished.”

*********** FDR’s very own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, saw the folly of the New Deal, writing: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!” The bottom line is that Roosevelt’s New Deal policies turned what would have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 16-year affair.

*********** The 1930s depression was caused by and aggravated by acts of government, and so was the current financial mess that we’re in. Do we want to repeat history by listening to those who created the calamity? That’s like calling on an arsonist to help put out a fire.

*********** Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

[Alsatian]

Interesting read. Thanks for posting that. Walter Lippmann was generally in support of progressivism. Evidently he did not see wealth creation as contradictory of advancing the good of humanity -- progressivism. This is an important point. Somehow the word "wealth" has come to take on a dodgy cast, as if wealth is somehow a bad thing. In point of fact, without creation of wealth we are stuck with a decaying world, lack of resources to support and care for increased population -- a steadily declining standard of living. If ideas were used a bit more carefully the concept of wealth creation would be valued and prized and instead people would focus on the debate as to how a community of people who collaborate to create wealth ought to distribute this wealth among themselves. THAT is the crux of the social/governmental issue. No question about it, wealth creation on its own is good.

[ipscshooter]

Originally Posted by Alsatian

Iwithout creation of wealth we are stuck with a decaying world, lack of resources to support and care for increased population -- a steadily declining standard of living.

A decaying world and declining standard of living is precisely what the imbecilic Left WANT. After all, why is it fair that hundreds of millions of Africans live in squalor while you, by simple luck, were born in America, and, as a result, have exploited the resources of third world countries in order to accumulate a wealth of consumer goods, and air conditioning, and a 3000 square foot house, and well nourished children... How can it possibly be fair when the only difference between you and them is the fortuity of being born here rather than there? CHEATER!!!!


How else can we explain Obama's appointment to a position of power someone who has called for the "de-development" of the American economy? It is impossible to bring the standard of living of the entire planet up to ours, so, we must bring our standard of living down to theirs. Fairness. Redistribution of wealth. Social Justice.


Liberals = pieces of shyte.

[Alsatian]

Originally Posted by ipscshooter

How else can we explain Obama's appointment to a position of power someone who has called for the "de-development" of the American economy?

Who are you talking about? Can you provide more information? Also, can you speak any more fully about this concept of "de-development?" Sure, I get the high level idea, I think, which would be to roll-back the many creature comforts and luxuries we have come to expect. Maybe get rid of ice makers in refrigerators but keep refrigerators. Maybe get rid of Mr Coffee devices and leave us with the old style metallic drip type coffee makers. Get rid of microwaves. All of these comforts and luxuries consume energy and other resources. I assume that is the high level. More details and leads into who is talking about these things.

I'm not questioning the accuracy. For awhile I have been totally perplexed by some of the things seemingly intelligent people do, and I have been on something of a quest to try to understand and fathom their thinking (making the generous assumption that thinking is involved -- it remains to be seen whether this generosity is merited). I started this by trying to understand some aspects of French participative democracy . . . particularly the form of participation that manifests itself in burning automobiles. I have learned a lot but possibly have created more questions to answer than reaching answers to my original questions. Still, the analysis and investigation pays dividends, it happens, for understanding some stuff that happens here in the US.

Oh by the way, if you probe deeply enough you can find some sources and some bonafide rational principles behind some of the things that happen, but very often the original ideas get distorted or totally bent out of shape or are very far removed from the original conditions the analysis was directed to. For example, when you read JJ Rousseau it behooves you to remember the context in which he was living -- the ancien regime. Nobles had privileges that non-nobles could not have, important privileges like freedom from paying certain taxes and exclusive access to some roles such as military leadership and other positions of power. We are very far removed from that now -- though sometimes revolutionary theater buffoons bravely make outlandish accusations about a class-bound society as if we were again living in the time of the ancien regime. Thus, just how do you apply Rousseau's insights and analysis? Not obvious.

[ipscshooter]

John Holdren, Obama's "Science and Technology Czar>"

Controversial White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNS News earlier this week he would use "free market" principles to implement what he called a "massive campaign" to "de-develop the United States".
As the "science czar", Holdren deals with a wide range of issues, including health care and global warming.



In a book he co-authored in 1973 with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, he wrote, "A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States".


"De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation," they wrote in Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.


When asked by CNS News what he meant, he replied, "What we meant by that was stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality. Thanks a lot." When asked specifically how this would be done, he replied, "Through the free market economy."


In 1995, Holdren, Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily of Stanford University declared that we all needed to "face up" to "a world of zero net physical growth" that requires people consume less.

The three wrote an essay entitled, "The Meaning of Sustainability" in which they announced, "We know for certain, for example, that: No form of material growth (including population growth) other than asymptotic growth is sustainable."

In the past, Holdren has called for a number of controversial growth-killing measures, including a global "carbom tax" and has called for policies that would cause energy prices to skyrocket.

In the 1970's Holdren was one of many who believed in global cooling, warning of biblical disasters unless drastic measures were taken. He has long been an advocate of de-industrialization and de-population. What is most disconcerting is that now he has a position to help make his dreams become reality.