Here’s a summary, by Lee Cary, of my colleague Charles Rowley’s new book on the Great Depression and the current downturn (co-authored with Nathanael Smith). A discussion with Charles follows the summary.
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Should be interesting. I wonder how history will turn out THIS time.
Because socialism has worked every time it’s tried, right muirbot?
A May piece in the American Thinker stated that Animal Spirits authors Akerlof and Shiller implied that we citizen consumers are irrational animals and the government is the wise zookeeper.
They subscribe to the theory that government is above the fray.
How quaint.
The greatest post-war stimulus provided by the US government occurred when it dismissed millions of servicemen and servicewomen from their work with state capital and plant (weapons and munitions and etc.) and then slashed state spending and cut taxes. The labour, and income, for new investment thus released then went to produce far greater value output working with private capital and producing for the private consumer.
Say’s law of markets insists that demand for one’s output is made with other non-rivalrous output. Exchangable produce is the source of demand. Money is merely used to perform the transaction of indirect exchange of non-money for a different type of non-money. More money supply merely boosts prices but more produce boosts sales.
The present so-called stimulus increases the employment of depreciating dollars to pay for workers to work with state capital in producing low value output. At the same time taxes are to be raised. Being the opposite of the 1945 to 1947 policy it will have the opposite effect.