

1938 in 2010 - jamesbressi
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1

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ajuc
I'm surprised that USA newspapers mostly support Keynsian theory. That's maybe
10th article I've read that agitates to increase spendings.

Is it universaly believed in America that the only way out of recession is by
going deeper into debt? Examples from Europe (German, Greece) and China seems
(IMO) to contradict that there are similarities between Great Crisis of '20
and this?

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lzw
There are many examples from our own history as well, such as the great
depression.

The reason is that the media in the us is very heavily influenced by
government and the political parties. It is much easier to publish interviews,
opinion pieces from political partisans like krugman and government press
releases than it is to go out and dig up news, consider an alternative
perspective and write about it with some depth.

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markstansbury
This whole "double-down" strategy is a bit terrifying to me. But it could
work. The real key though, I think, is that it would only work if the stimulus
money put people to work on projects that would increase the Nation's
competitive edge: green infrastructure, broadband, better schools. Dumping the
stimulus into tax cuts for home buyers--which serve only to pull demand
forward--that strikes me as a useless wealth transfer.

Any stimulus spending should both create jobs now (to distribute consumption
dollars and ease consumer fear) and should pay dividends in the future by
creating an atmosphere where the average worker can be more productive. The
WWII stimulus obviously had a major impact because, by winning the war, we
emerged with a huge competitive advantage. Unless we're going to rebuild that
advantage by bombing our competition back to 1944, which I hope we aren't
considering (...), we've gotta find another way to construct that advantge.
That's the challenge.

~~~
hga
The problem is this is self-evidently political money, and it's allocation is
_always_ , pretty much by definition (well, outside of a war) going to be
political. That was true for FDR and has been true for Obama.

You and I disagree on how it should be spent (I think "green infrastructure"
is a mirage at best, unless you're also e.g. serious about nuclear power,
broadband could use _some_ money but really needs a different regulatory
regime and the "spend more money on schools" approach has been tried for _half
a century_ with highly negative results) ... but I guarantee you neither of us
would be happy with how it would actually be spent.

Heck, even if it's spent in a totally partisan pro-Democratic Party way, based
on the last stimulus it would sure look like it would be a bad investment;
then again, Dave Obey has decided to spend more time with his family after
this Congress (he's the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations and
writing the stimulus bill was delegated to him).

