News: America's "War on Capitalism": Why More Govt. Stimulus Is a Bad Idea"

[thatguy1]

Originally Posted by floridasandy

that is simply not true. at no time did we have a budget surplus. our debt has been steadily increasing, no matter which president was in the white house. the real danger is that we have had a steadily decreasing manufacturing sector which our government does not seem to take into account with its massive spending agenda, and with a negative growth GDP (which we have now) our economy is at serious risk.

You are exactly right.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by subsound

People can shout about it all they want, but it's not socialism...it's Keynesian economics. It helps the bad times by stimulating the economy by replacing the consumer, it worked for the great depression and the destruction in Europe in WW2. If it is socialism you would have to say most of the worlds economies from 1929 to 1972 were socialist (including the US), and they were more controlled at that point as well.

It's never good to go spending so much into debt, but on the other hand the debt is not entirely Obama's child after 6 months in office. People tend to ignore that it has been running for more then 7 decades. It was at it's lowest point under Carter, increased from 40% GDP to 70% GDP under Reagan, and under Clinton there was a budget surplus (from Bush Sr.'s tax increases and economic boom) that was being used to pay off the national debt that then re inflated under Bush Jr (U.S. National Debt Graph: Since Great Depression). It's still much lower now as a percentage of GDP then under Truman.

Hi subsound,

Keynesian is more or less socialism. It is central planning of an economy though fiscal means. The trouble is many things that pass for socialism are rather shallow observations. The idea that government is behind it without its counterpart in private capitalist interest is absurd. There is far more corruption than stupidity. Capitalists should be the first to suspect self interest. If people insist on a capitalist society then they had better get a handle on public assets, and externalities or simply succumb to a wretched form of socialism where profits are private and losses are public. I have not been posting much lately because I have spent too much time digging into the last New deal and have found myself looking at the birth of US socialism in Western water works. It is also revealing that capitalism was up to the task of failure with respect to water west of the 100th meridian. That is why it went Federal. The dust bowl was capitalism's answer to water management in the west. Pork barrel spending and insolvent projects was socialism's answer. However it was the kind of facade socialism which at its source, is self interest.
Carter for example tried to shut down a water project in Oklahoma. It was about 40 million USD and it was for a single fish farm. It was a capital enterprise behind it who was in with a powerful senator. Which paradigm is it?

All the while the Bureau of Reclamation was trying to damn everything up to justify its existence, the only way they could pay for many projects was hydroelectric which would subsidize cheap water in the west . It was supposed to be justified by irrigation projects though the numbers rarely added up so they just wrapped it all together. However many irrigation projects required expensive high damns. The ones who fought this most were private power companies. Big surprise. Thats why the power companies were behind the Corp. The only thing that ever works is to pit one special interest against another.

The best connected growers however were smart enough to justify it with the Army Corp of Engineers. If they called it a flood control project, its a project for the Corp and then the water in the reservoir was incidental to the project and free. Guess why flood control for a one horse town was made into a project. These "capitalist" farms would then out compete those who had to pay even for subsidized water. Naturally the eastern dry farmer was one who paid for all this while being put out of business. Thats one reason why California farmers became millionaires while others went bust, especially dry farmers.. The only real useful thing in some of these dams for the most part was the hydroelectric, but that was again opposed by private power companies. So what would we like to call this? Socialism? Capitalism? Neither system works without an informed vigilant public. Voting along party lines and these silly idealistic positions does not cut it.