Flomax….

Levitra….

I say that as a political scientist. I teach political science, so presumably I ought to agree, but I don't. Schrekegost did more to make my life better than any, or all, of the politicians named here.

& yes, Martin, he totally makes that assertion. Read his post again. He always makes that assertion.

He doesn't. You do. The record is very clear.

Say what you want Albatross but the post New Deal economy seriously puts your economic philosophy to question. It should have been a total disaster yet it was probably our strongest economy ever.

Again: post New Deal means after the New Deal stopped. You've never explained how you can credit FDR for the things that people did when he wasn't able to stand in their way anymore.

Do you also credit the bubonic plague for the post-plague decline in death rates?

Really? Does Mr. Hoover represent my economic philosophy? The man raised taxes, jacked up tariffs to ridiculous levels, and proceeded to build the largest federal buildings then in the world (the commerce and labour departments)? Under Hoover the Fed raised interest rates during a period of deflation. Under Hoover the government began the process of paying people to dig holes and fill them up again. Mr. Hoover (the great engineer) was no lover of laissez-faire. He was a great statist—almost a big a statist as the man who succeeded him. He took what may have been an otherwise sharp, but brief downturn and tuned into a disaster with his heavy handed statist policies. Mr. Hoover does not represent my economic philosophy, but what about the successes of Mr. Roosevelt? He inherited an economy that had bottomed-out (despite the best efforts of Mr. Hoover), which slid back into recession in 1936. Unemployment was little better in 1940 than in 1933—even with all the war orders and capital flight from Europe pouring in. Nice to see that on the eve of WW II after nearly 8 years on the Job the New Deal was really working to pull the American economy out of The Depression. Even if WW II ended the Great Depression (as most historians seem to say it does—I disagree—doubling production to build weapons ain’t exactly stimulus the people can eat), then was it a war and not the New Deal that ended the Great Depression? And what of the unemployed? Funny, how the number of unemployed corresponds very closely to the number of people who served in WW II. We just took the unemployed and gave them guns or gave them the jobs of others we then gave guns. I won’t go into the details of the post-war economy—Truman’s two lame duck terms, and the gradual re-opening of trade and removal of much government control of the economy, which led to a post war boom—after all the mal-effects of government wartime regulation, wage, and price controls had finally come to pass, the country finally emerged from the Great Depression after WW II, more than twelve years after the New Deal began fighting it—as the saying goes “Mission Accomplished.” My (and I say my because I have adopted the beliefs of intellects that dwarf my own) economic ideology of free trade and free markets has brought wealth freedom and prosperity to the world. The statists have little to show for their efforts except for poverty—and a lot of corpses.

Are you trying to tell me what Flash wrote was sensible?

No, I don't credit Reagan much with anything. I don't know where you got the idea that I was. Just made it up, I guess. I was responding to your repeated assertion that presidents in general, Democrats specifically, FDR especially, can bless us into prosperity with their wise policies. You countered Flash's crediting of Reagan by again, if only implicitly, crediting FDR for the post-WWII upswing, then posted a graph which implied that Democrats are better at running the economy, or as you put it, you "corrected the timeline".

& yes, Martin, he totally makes that assertion. Read his post again. He always makes that assertion.

I think that's why Anon said, "The direction of the impact, however, is a different matter entirely."

Therefore, LOGICALLY, anything good he did must have been caused by the FDR administration.

muirgeo doesn't make this assertion. That's you. muirgeo counters an assertion that Reagan's tax cuts had something do with Schreckengost creativity, since they clearly didn't.

I'm a technophile myself, so I admire the man as much as anyone. Was he more valuable than FDR? Maybe so, but I don't credit FDR with much value, so that's not saying much. Lots of people we never hear of make greater contributions than FDR.

My problem with the hero worship is that we then start decreeing it "just" that our heroes be as powerful as FDR. So we give Schreckengost a forcible monopoly over a whole category of production (a patent) even though, despite his undoubted intellect, someone else would have come up (and many probably did come up) with the same or similar innovations without him.

Then this monopoly and its descendants become the property of a corporation that lobbies Congress for regulatory impediments to market entry before selling the monopoly to the Chinese in exchange for a flow of currency to a few U.S. corporatists.

So let's praise Schreckengost and then bury his patents with him, if he had any. If he didn't, let's sing his praises louder.

I wasn't crediting his success with any president but discrediting the ignorant idea that his success was related to Reaganomics. I was correcting the time-line because we see stupid erroneous stuff like Flash wrote based on pushing the false assumption that the economy does better under Republicans.

Are you trying to tell me what Flash wrote was sensible?

In fact his greatest contibutions came during and after FDR's administration.

Therefore, LOGICALLY, anything good he did must have been caused by the FDR administration.

In the early 1940's Viktor began quietly revolutionizing the manufacture of children's pedal cars as well.

Wow. My dad was born in the early forties. His birth must have caused these innovations, since the events coincided loosely. I can't wait to tell him. He'll be so proud.

Oh, he'll scoff at first, but I'll repeat my idiotic claim over & over again & insist that it's empirical evidence, without explaining how one event caused the other, & without acknowledging that this is what educated people call a post hoc fallacy, but I'll still insist that I'm right anyway. If my dad isn't convinced even after I repeat my assertion a few more times, I'll just declare him blinded by ideology.

More for Flash. I think the politicians and their policy do matter.

I guess I'll have to go add an entry on his behalf after doing some research on the guy. But first, I need to clock out an go home