Paul Krugman takes George Will to the woodshed over FDR's Big FIX
By Heather Monday Nov 17, 2008 4:00pm
From the man who called the union benefits at automotive companies a "welfare state," we have George Will on This Week showing his compassionate conservative side yet again. I would like to see George Will working on an assembly line until the age of 65 and then let him speak out about someone retiring before that age or receiving benefits that they somehow don't deserve. Working for thirty years at a company while giving your blood in the process is not enough for these people.
John Amato:
Conservatives love to rewrite history so they can trumpet their own philosophy. Paul Krugman explains to George Will how FDR got America out of the Depression. Conservatives have been trying to unravel the New Deal ever since.
Krugman: There was a collapse of the financial system which was not restored for a long time. There was a deep slump in consumer demand and therefore no investment demand so we were stuck in this trap.
Update: The video links with the correct video should be working now.
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From today....
It's at Kunstler.com and the title is: "In The Reality Lounge".
This, IMHO, is what everyone needs to be focused on, including all the "conservatives" and President-elect Obama.
George Will looked flabbergasted
I was waiting for Mr. Willful to start arguing with the NOBLE PRIZE
WINNING ECONOMIST!
Go ahead baseball boy!
Right-wing idiot hack, who hasn't been correct about anything in the last thirty years, gets his ass handed to him by Noble leaureat who of course, also happens to be one of them libruls'.
I think were going to see alot of conservatards getting their asses handed to them in the next few years. It will be fun to watch. Apparently, they haven't come close to realizing yet, that anyone with an I.Q. larger than their shoe size knows conservatives are FULL OF SHIT!
an IQ that is a positive number.
Is this the full clip? Krugman doesn't say anything specific about FDR or what happened during the depression.
No. My title was changed on the post. I sent the FDR clip for another post.
I was going to ask the same thing. It seems truncated without any specific point being made.
I'm going to switch the video with a mash up of the two clips. Sorry for the mix up.
Thanks. That'll clear up the confusion.
Thank you Heather.
long term stuff is for after we survive this down turn. lets keep companies in business for now and people in their homes for now and see this through till a bottom hits, and then we can know what to do long term. but we have people in other congressional districts argueing against helping gm, when you know they would help if it were their district. america first.
it doesnt continue to where will says that fdr extended the depression through the new deal programs...and where krugman takes him to to the woodshed by pointing out that with 20 percent unemployment, it was highly unlikely that anyone of means was going to invest in new biz
im telling you now...in a matter of weeks, if not days, the following guy will become the new star on faux and many of the goon radio shows....burton folson jr...a rightwing revisionist historian who wrote a book in 96 declaring that the robber barons have gotten a raw deal, and just released a book called "new deal or raw deal" where he states, under no uncertain terms, that fdr extended the depression as a result of his programs...and that what he shouldve done was cut taxes
the guy is a fucking fruit cake...and the wingnuts love him
and will is the very essense of an elitist
of the conservative punditocracy had to work one day as a steamfitter, electrician, structural ironworker, diesel mechanic, nurse, waitress, or any other physically demanding job, they'd be curled up in the fetal position crying. They think everyone has cushy writing gigs like they do where they can be wrong 75% of the time and keep their jobs.
There is no way these fools have been right more than 5% tops, thus 90+% of miss ratio is more like it IMHO.
It is astounding, there are only 2 types of people who can keep their job despite being wrong ALL the time: Conservatives and the Clergy. No wonder they walk hand in hand...
Remember, if it were for the reactionaries/conservatives we would still be monkeys in the trees. After all, if god had meant for us to walk on the ground, why did he made the trees, right? Same for the caves... and on and on.
guess-timate was based on the fact they usually get the date right, spell their names correctly, and have few spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. It's kind of like the SATs; you get a certain number of baseline points just for showing up and signing your name. :)
never seem to remember that without the workers that make the PRODUCT to sell then there is no economy. Trickle down never works. Barack Obama has it right, you gotta grow the economy from the bottom UP. Trickle down economics is Voodoo Economics. On that note, GHW Bush (41) had it right.
I'm pretty sick of being trickled on.
is that the ones on the bottom of the pile are called Peons.
did not provide any incentive to the automotive industry to improve
not when the repugs write into their tax bill a write-off if companies buy an suv
not when repugs veto emission standards
fact remains...had reagan not gutted carter's energy plan...we wouldnt be facing the problems that we face today, and the automotive companies would be doing well
trickle don is another way of saying "let'em eat cake."
I never understood how the American middle class, was so fundamentally stupid to buy into the idea that the rich would share their wealth with them.
Qu'ill mangent de la brouchet.
George Will is such a prissy little shit is it any wonder he thinks financial speculation actually produces something and actually producing something is best done in China?
In the case of firefighters, it's because we take a beating and most firefighters end up with numerous chronic injuries from saving the likes of your doughy self.
George Will, what positive thing, what boon for humanity have you accomplished in your privileged life?!
I'll bet those autoworkers take a beating, too.
Mr. Will, you do not know what "hard work" is.
Once out of my 'industry' (prof of edn) for a couple of years, I would have had to get a whole new Ph.D. to go back to that 'work.'
I am effectively unemployable. Too old, a bit infirm (age does that; i cannot hump a 40-lb tool belt around for 10 hours/day, i don't care how much it pays), too well-educated, too impatient with fools, too much residual thc...
so i muddle along with social security, a couple of tiny and diminishing retirement accounts, some rents from a 4-plex i own with the bank, and occasional gigs in the movies and seasonal santa parties...
coping
..finding a passion that can serve as a partial source of income? Reading, wrtiting, painting, sailing.. What is it that makes you tick? Run with it!!
Keep in mind, Krugman has the Establishment Seal of Approval now, which is simply a good reason to take his words with heavy skepticism.
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Working on the problem. I switched it with my You Tube video instead.
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...w/ NO military experience?? I guess that's the qualification for being a right wing ass hat.
Actually, the standard explanation for the better economy under FDR wasn't his massive economic policies; that helped American morale though; it was the war. Conservatives will argue war leads to new discoveries, efficiency and the buying and selling of munitions. Others will argue that the rest of the world's economy was decimated, leaving us without competition.
argues that WWII and the ensuing draft took a lot of unemployed men and gave them "work". Reducing the workforce by the large number of draftees, converting idle consumer factories to defense purposes, and the involvement of women in occupations usually held by men gave a temporary lift to the economy which took years to pay for. The Korean conflict didn't help in paying down WWII debt either.
Maybe someday some one will endow a Nobel Prize to honor the World's Biggest Asshole. Until then George, you're on your own.
Biggest dick, underqualified, biggest asshole, overqualified.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/17/paul... one minute clip.
Where I work we have people 70 and 75 still working, or more correctly, not able to retire because they would become paupers.
In a lot of blue-collar land its a case of work until you drop.
George Swill looking over at his shoulder at Krugman because he knows that Paul is loading up a left cross that is going to drop him like the intellectual featherweight that Swill is.
Krugman for back-to-back Nobel Prizes! ;>)
It's Sam Donaldson vs, George Will in the battle of the bad hairpieces! Only on pay-per-view.
Even faced with bankruptcy, Big Labor and Big Business are 2 sides of the entitlement coin, united in waging asymmetrical warfare on the true working class, who work for realistic wages around the world.
always gets blamed for inflation and, as Ravi Batra says, that's bullshit. Unions,
while flawed institutions, are responsible for most of the workplace progress of the last century. They represent less than 10% of the private workforce yet are blamed for most of the problems. That doesn't make sense. Don't piss on organized labor because they managed to hold on to benefits which were lost to most of us in non-union jobs. We've been lectured by economists and pundits that this is the inevitable result of globalization-so we're supposed to just shut up and take it. Larry Kudlow-type "cowboy capitalism" makes a select few very rich at the expense of most of the rest. In order to perpetuate this bogus economic theory they have to blame the conservatives' favorite target-labor. Don't buy into it.
Why do the Big 3 suck so much.
Both the management and labor are dinosaurs.
Fuck them both, fund companies who are truly innovating.
We have plenty, including Tesla.
can only do what management directs them to do. That includes the genius designers who gave us 11mpg SUVs and mega-pickups so obese rug-rat chauffers can drive their kids to soccer practice. Ross Perot once called the GM board of directors "Pet Rocks". The same labor you deride now used to make decent cars-like the Ford Taurus. Then management decided to go for the crack cocaine of SUVs and 3 ton pickups. How are engineering and management fuck-ups labor's fault?
The Republicans are not being honest. Since Barack Obama announced he would use the car makers to rebuild our economic structure, they have been all for letting the big 3 auto makers fail. The opinion game carried out on national TV is partisan politics at its best.
With no legislative advantages in congress or the senate, the Republicans have to use their unofficial branch of power in which they do have control over: The Main Stream Media. The call to bring forth the Rush Limbaughs and other notorious shock jocks to run "opinion control" will take shape during this "Lame Duck" period. Somehow, with the help of media Republicans, there will be a drive to eliminate a major element in Obama's plan to rebuild this economy.
There is hope. I could see this a mile away, and when that happens, others see the same thing. Maybe this will fall flat on its face just like the John McCain campaign. Time will tell.
Joseph
not as it really was.
The problem with Will and his privileged, reactionary ilk is that they have no appreciation for the fact that Franklin Roosevelt not only saved capitalism from it's own worst tendencies and indulgences, bringing prosperity to America by inventing a mixed economy on the fly in the midst of total world calamity, FDR probably saved people like Will and his forebearers from a 20th century version of the guillotine.
Without the New Deal there would likely have been *real* class warfare in the United States. (And I'm not talking about raising taxes on the richest 2% or whatever). Real violence and large scale backlash against the wealthy was narrowly avoided by the reforms FDR and the Democratic Congress put in place in the early to mid-1930's.
This whole meme about how FDR's policies didn't work to pull America out of The Great Depression, that they made it worse or that we needed WWII to get us out of it is a revisionist history CROCK.
This chart shows that growth in Gross Domestic Product (Gross National Product in those days) recovered in as sharp a V-Shape as any recovery ever. And it was YEARS before we entered WWII:
Real Gross Domestic Product Chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gdp29-41.jpg
The only glitch was a relatively mild recession in 1938 but the recovery continued just fine in 1939. We should only have such a record over these last 8 years!
Here is a chart showing debt as a percent of GDP stopping it's unabated pre-FDR years rise and leveling off throughout the pre-War FDR years, climbing to new heights only because we entered WWII:
National Debt as % of GNP (GDP) Chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Debt1929-5...
And here is reknowned economist, Robert Higgs, detailing the numbers that show the economy was recovering just fine before we entered WWII and that, in fact, consumption, inflation, debt and stock market investment numbers SUFFERED during the War Years compared with the pre-War recovery years and did NOT rally during or immediately after the War as FDR policy detractors try to suggest.
The "depression" that WWII helped to end was not the economic one. It was the emotional one that arose from the euphoria we enjoyed when it was OVER.
Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s
The Journal of Economic History
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.a...
In 1940 and 1941 the economy was recovering smartly from the Depression, but in the latter year the recovery was becoming ambiguous, as substantial resources were diverted to war production. From 1942 to 1944 war production increased rapidly. Although there is no defensible way to place a value on the outpouring of munitions, its physical dimensions are awesome.
...To sum up, World War II got the economy out of the Great Depression, but not in the manner described by the orthodox story. The war itself did not get the economy out of the Depression. The economy produced neither a “carnival of consumption” nor an investment boom, however successfully it overwhelmed the nation’s enemies with bombs, shells, and bullets.52 But certain events of the war years—the buildup of financial wealth and especially the transformation of expectations—justify an interpretation that views the war as an event that recreated the possibility of genuine economic recovery. As the war ended, real prosperity returned.
Why can't we have Paul Krugman for Secretary of the Treasury? He is human, has a heart, and thinks. Right now all that Lex Luther Paulson wants is help for Wall Street. How dare tho se rotten lazy children who want to eat and don't want to go to bed hungry! where can I sign up for a job, do it really badly, and take home a big bonus? I hope that we can wait for change to occur before the situation worsens.
I agree with you. I saw him on Olbermann last week, and he's in such comfortable command of financial issues, 'til makes me think he can help solve this crisis.
Krugman is the adult tutoring the little rich flunkies.
Will is a know-nothing, bloviator of mish-mash.
Based on research Krugman is a self-described liberal. His choice of the book title "The Conscience of a Liberal" is a play on Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative". Krugman has explained that he views the term "liberal" in the American context to mean "more or less what social democratic means in Europe”. He was an ardent critic of the George W. Bush administration and its foreign and domestic policy. One thing's for sure: The next administration's economic team had better be ready to hit the ground running, because from day one it will find itself dealing with the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. In Germany some guy metaphorically flush money down the toilet, have you ever heard that it's a bad idea? He'll really need short term loans now, because it was about $13,000 worth. He made a complaint, but police can't do a thing about it. He never said why he was carrying that much money around in a plastic bag. I'd give a few Cash Advance worth to hear that story.
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