"To specifically address your question, Obama-care is a compulsory program that forces prices higher and service quality lower due to the natural tendency that such a program is only as strong as its lowest common denominator... which in this case is the very services provided by health care itself. While I, as a tax payer, wouldn't have to USE Obama-care, I'd still have to pay for it... which is the same as SSI, I know... but the SSI deduction shouldn't effect my ability to make alternative or multiple plans to supplement my retirement benefits (at least not as I read the 1935 version)."
I'm sorry, but I just don't see my question addressed any where in here, or in your paragraph that followed. The question was not whether Obama-care lowers standrads or drives prices up, or whether FDR needed to do "something" to provide for people when the dole ran out. In fact the specifics, success or failure, good or bad have not a thing to do with my question. My question is - how is "pension insurance", or any other state or federal retirement plan Constitutional if it is COMPULSORY? I don't care whether Social Security worked perfectly and doubled the returns of private pensions (although it was 4xs less). Or whether Obama care is actually budget neutral and increases level of care (ya, right) - the Constitutional question surrounds around it being compulsory, read: "forced, under penalty of law." Whether Social security effects your ability to make other retiremnt arrangments is irrelevant. Obama care allows for you to still go private if you want. None of that's the point. How can you contend cumpulsory enrollment in health care insurance is un-Constitutional, while compulsory enrollment in retirement "gap" insurance is not?
****
"As I said before, every single economic indicator I can think of says that things started to get better beginning with the New Deal, and when the New Deal was being "turned off", things got worse again. I feel I have shown that even the one indicator that didn't show the same level of improvement was better than history has led us to believe ..."
2 things regarding this ....
First, I don't know who this Darby gentelmen is, I have never heard of him nor his 33 year old report. I DO know that every history book I have, ALL published well after 1976, do not refelct his "curve." I can go trapsing around the internet and find whatever I like. I'm sorry, but the numbers of unemployment are recorded by history, and to this day still printed, in their original form. I can only assume that this is because whatever "standard" was used to judge unemployment levels pre-crash is the same standard used post crash - thus the farmer allowance is provided for. If the unemplotment rate was 5% before the crash, when they didn't count farmers, and 15% right after the crash, when they didn't count farmers, then it still rose by 10%. See what I'm saying? In addition, as I understand it (the way those thousands of anti-New Deal economists explain it) is that a government contract to complete a specific project is not a classicly defined as a "job." In other words if old Mrs. Johnson down the street tells you she'll pay you $100 to paint her kitchen, that doesn't mean you've found "gainful employment." Using this Darby as evidence that unemploymnet "wasn't as bad" isn't just unacceptable to me, but to modern day economists (and clearly those dusring the 30's, Im sure FDR would have loved to have touted these revised figures otherwise). I sincerely doubt that all the historians printed literature since 1976 has been an effort tp willfully mislead the public. I didn't question much of your GDP numbers because they were from recognized sources, but I'm afraid, as they say in scrabble, I'm going to have to "challenge." My sources say the numbers stand, and for the rerasons I just listed.
Now look - DON'T FLY OFF THE HANDLE, and go on some tirade about how if I'm just not going to accept your data, reject it out of hand, then there is no point to any of this. This is ONE sub level issue, don't get side tracked, what I have to say at my close is much too important for that. We'll agree that unemployment was "bad" and unadressed during the era, whatever the number, to the man, was.
Second, we all agree that the "Roosevelt Recession" occurred when he cut off the spigot and made an attempt at balancing the budget. Doesn't that demonstrate that New Deal had to date failed to lead us into a sustainable recovery? If the economy had "recovered' at this point, or what recovery the nation had seen to that date was not artificial, not unsustainable, then shouldn't we have been able to come off the life support "spigot" without frefalling into an economic down turn? What you're telling me is that once the feeding tube was removed we again collapsed. Is that the sign of a healthy or recovered economy? That it needs federal dollars flowing like rivers to be sustained? That after 6 years of new Deal we were still in need of life support tells me that the prescribed treatment to make us well was not working. A healthy or recovered economy is NOT one in desperate need of a federal life support spigot.****
"We can argue subtleties till the cows come home, but in the end we know the New Deal wasn't a failure because the Great Depression ended and it hasn't repeated since."
Now Titus, you know full well that is an utterly indefensible statement. Correlation DOES NOT signal causation. I also know the Yankees won the World Series in the 30's, that doesn't mean New Deal caused them to win. Simply because "B" happened it does not follow that "A" caused it. At this point I am more convinced then ever that New Deal failed. Unemployment was still unaddressed, and by 1940 had climbed back up to 18.9% (according to my historical literature), and it was clear from the 1938 recession that the nation was still limping along on life support that if shut down would cause a free fall into recession. WWII is the difference. And by the standard set in your above sentence I can then difinitively state that: We know New Deal failed because we weren't able to come off life support, regain national confidence and effectively combat unemployment, thus ending the Great Depression, until WWII started.
****
"I guess I simply don't understand how we can come to the conclusion that the recovery could have gone faster, when there are no historical examples of an economic disaster to compare it to in the entire modern history of the world."
Look, here is the bottom line as it stands now, for me anyway. It is true that for us to debate the entire breadth, width and scope of something as monumentally huge and breathtakingly intricate as the US economy, and draw direct line conclusions as to what a specific program or agency or bill did to such an economy in the largest recorded economic disaster in world history, probably makes you and I among the most arrogant bloggers on the net, no question. I sit here this morning and go into the thousands, as you correctly noted, of economists that say New Deal was a recipe for disaster. There are thousands still that take your position. And both sides have their share of respected economists (my favorite would be Walter Williams, chair of economics at Princeton University). The difference is that although I, and the economists whom side with me (I should note it is the other way around) have reams of data showing that "if FDR had not done this", and "if FDR had not done that" the economy would have done X. Y, and Z and been much better, there is no way to "prove" this through application during the Great Depression - it didn't happen, New Deal did. I haven't a time machine. They have pulled data from recessions in which their prescription was applied (such as Reagan), and shown how we recovered without the need of the FDR style taxes, government programs, and spending. That's as close as I (they) can get to "proof." So let me get more basic then whether the WPA "worked" . . .
There is no question in my mind that a "conservative" template serves the US economy better. Especially in times of crisis. I believe to my core that this nation can recover from crisis, any crisis, including the Great Depression, without unprecedented government intervention. I believe, as Williams et al do, that there exists a clear prescription out through curbed government spending, lower taxes, deregulation, new business incentive, lowered corporate tax rates, etc. I reject that government should spend in the form of stimulus (programs, doles, what have you) to keep or get money in our pocket & the economy going, because I know they first have to take the money out of my pocket and the economy in order to give it back. And contrary to populous rhetoric, there is no money "not being used" in the private sector. But I digress ... the point is my embracement of a conservative economic theory leads me to the conclusion that we could have gotten out of the Great Depression without New Deal, and more rapidly. That in fact a bigger, more interventionist government fueled by high taxation actually serves to prohibit economic growth and recovery. But I can't go back in time and replace FDR with myself and demonstrate this. I know (as do you) there are instances where this theory has been applied in other recessions (1921/1980) & recovery was rapid and real. However, I am stuck with the problem that forms of recovery began during the era of New Deal. I must add here that in my opinion no recovery is complete with high unemployment or a constant need for non defense/non war time federal dollars - that this wasn't corrected until WWII tells me even if I accept every post of yours as gospel New Deal still didn't "finish the job." But as to the job" it did do, your improved GDP numbers, and rises in specific sectors, etc - I believe that the nation would have been better served, both economically and in terms of avoiding the introduction of progressivist ideology as law, by following a course other than New Deal. I don't know how else to say it more plainly. I feel in instances where my advocated approach worked makes this posit defensible, and I certainly believe my preferred course is more Constitutional. To put it another way we all here, to the man, know that high taxation stymies production. That overburdensome regulation limits economic expansion. That big government programs are almost alwways doomed to fail, and perhaps cause more damage thn they were intended to fix. Yet I am to believe that Titus' numbers where he can demonstrate positive economic developments happened because, not despite, New Deal. That in this one era it worked, because the economic psychic of the American people was so damaged, so molested, that it needed, however temporary, a big brother. Well, I can't speak to psychic of the 1930's man. I do realize FDR's re & re-reelection post New Deal is a fair observation to that point ... although I know of at least one (future) OSS officer and one Navy man, whom shares my name, that voted against it :)
So .... I can only conclude by saying that everything about the history of this nation, our Constitution, the Reagan era, unemployment circa 1940, the historical failures of government interventionsim at every level and sector of our society and economy (of which the examples are endless), tells me that we would have done better, faster, without New Deal and that in the future we should always endeavour to avoid big government and government interventionism as a response to economic crisis.
PS> I bet you're glad we had this debate (again) before you went back to work ... hehe.
No comments:
Post a Comment