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New Deal not Prozac to the Great Depression

Started by Will Wilkinson · 7 months ago

Tyler Cowen’s NY Times Economic Scene column on the Great Depression and the New Deal is a welcome dose of measured judgment. Bottom line:
In short, expansionary monetary policy and wartime orders from Europe, not the well-known policies of the New Deal, did the most to ma ... Continue reading »

14 comments

  • Michael Drake

    7 months ago

    I already thought the first sentence was the canonical view. The second seems in some tension with the first.
    reply
  • brad

    7 months ago

    Ultimately, economic recovery will come from economic demand from the real economy. I think Obama's approach, per today's radio address, of assisting the American economy to develop green energy solutions and infrastructure to support new energy will actually help accelerate our competitive edge in the next new economy in the energy sector.

    Think about the relationship between military spending in the '80's and the technology revolution of the '90's. A strong case can be made for energy being the next area in which American innovation can lead and the American economy can reap the benefits of proprietary product development.
    reply
  • Jesse A.

    7 months ago

    So Tyler is something like Steely Dan . A distinctive, easily recognizable sound, but utterly unpredictable. You know it when you hear it, but you wouldn't necessarily have expected that they would put out a song like that.
    reply
  • Freddie

    7 months ago

    Censoring comments?
    reply
  • Will Wilkinson

    7 months ago

    Huh?
    reply
  • Freddie

    7 months ago

    What the hell?

    Umm test
    reply
  • Freddie

    7 months ago

    OK sorry something very weird was happening in your comments box before, feel free to delete this trash.
    reply
  • Will Wilkinson

    7 months ago

    It's all here for posterity, my friend. Who knows what this exchange will be worth to the future.
    reply
  • Freddie

    7 months ago

    Zeus alone knows all....
    reply
  • GilM

    7 months ago

    Maybe the government will buy it for a few $billion. If we don't support the vital comments industry, the entire economy will collapse!
    reply
  • muirgeo

    7 months ago

    Interesting is that expansionary monetary policy helped us out of the last depression but it seems to have gotten us into this one.

    Bottom line set up the system so workers get paid a decent wage and income does not accumulate at the top and we will all be better off. The idea that policy does not effect wages, income distribution and economic productivity seems so at odds with historical facts.

    Set up a system where bad money chases out good and this will predictably happen again.
    reply
  • Milena Thomas

    7 months ago

    Should it not be mentioned that many of the New Deal policies helped us climb a bit deeper and settle just a bit longer into the Great Depression? Oh, and have come back to haunt us this turn down a similar path?
    reply
  • webgrrl

    7 months ago

    "But I cannot predict his opinions on most topics with any precision, yet always find them consistent with what I already knew about his commitments. What do you suppose that means?"

    It's an artifact of his Hansonism. As I myself have reluctantly been driven to become more and more Hansonian over the past year, I find people have started to say things like this to me as well.

    For example, I found myself recently fretting with a friend over whether we were stating something just because it made us feel loyal, and asking her for her best guess as to its actual truth. She rolled her eyes at me and said, "You're such an enigma."

    She happens to be an acquaintance of the well-known liberal commentator who last summer called me an "anti-feminist libertarian dinosaur" when I gingerly asked her if she really felt Obama's equal pay act gig would help her more than harm her, as a highly compensated female.

    Perhaps being Hansonian somehow translates to giving out-of-phase signals, which most find extremely confusing. I'll give you an 85% chance of that being true.

    Btw, WW: the commenting system sometimes eats comments; they just don't appear. It happened to me earlier this week. I also now get a message from Disqus on occasion telling me "your comment is on hold for moderation" - and then it appears 2 or 3 minutes later. So I had simply assumed you are now actively moderating all comments.
    reply
  • Richard

    7 months ago

    Hindsight bias?
    reply

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