Restore America: Ignore the Tea and Republican Party.

Restore America: Ignore the Tea and Republican Party.


Stop Trying to Balance Budgets!
by Harold Evans

The Dow closed below 10000 Tuesday, amid jitters about the global economy. Harold Evans on the lessons of the Great Depression, and why we shouldn’t cling to formal accountancy.

Do you know how to fix a flux capacitor? That’s the device that turned the DeLorean car into a time machine in the 1985 movie Back to the Future. It hurtled Michael J. Fox back 30 years to 1955. To return to his present day, his flux capacitor needed a providential shaft of lightning.

We’re trapped in a time machine now, heading back much further than Michael J. Fox—back to the ‘30s and on course to another Great Depression unless we get a shaft of lightning. That’s not going to come from the G-20 summit of leaders, despite the efforts of the more perceptive President Barack Obama; alas that the distorted shape of Congress’ $787 billion package gave stimulus a bad name.

The deficit hawks are back everywhere, sounding exactly like Herbert Hoover and the budget balancers who helped prolong the Great Depression. The common intuition then, as now with the Tea Partiers, is that unbalanced household budgets invite catastrophe, and so will unbalanced government budgets. Common sense can be wrong. Science is a journey of the unexpected. Those who cling to the homely metaphor of kitchen budgets are like beginners at skiing who find it hard to take the experts advice to lean away from the mountainside and into the void when making a turn to reduce speed. Every instinct screams at the novice to do the opposite, to hug the slope, and every ski slope is littered with the triumph of physics over psychology.

The common intuition then, as now with the Tea Partiers, is that unbalanced household budgets invite catastrophe, and so will unbalanced government budgets. Common sense can be wrong.

If you think the 2007-2010 recession and stubbornly high unemployment are grim, wait till you see the effects of the new austerity wished upon the world by the deficit hawks. Just look at the devastating and irrecoverable loss of wealth Ireland has suffered from 2007 on, outlined by Liz Alderman reporting from Dublin.

Instead of paying unemployment money to the millions out of work here and there, let’s get something for our money: massive retraining, a halfway decent railway system, broadband across the nation, crumbling water and sewage systems restored, an efficient National Grid, airline terminals as good as what we used to call the Third World’s, and so on. Do your own list. Getting America going again doesn’t by any means have to be by direct government employment, with all the bureaucratic obstructions. Much could be achieved by tax cuts, especially for small businesses.

The revenues from making and doing things would flow to government, reducing debt to GDP ratios faster and more to our benefit that the meat axe brigade will achieve.

The deficit hawks—themselves comfortably employed, thank you—dance on what they conceive as the grave of John Maynard Keynes, who tried in the ‘30s to convince FDR that balancing a budget in a depression was a fool’s delusion. They’ve revived the myth that the New Deal was based on Keynesian economics and the New Deal failed to end chronic mass unemployment. Therefore Keynesian remedies did not work. The New Deal did indeed fail to produce anything like full employment, but the one thing the “suck-it-and-see” president did not really try then was full-blown deficit financing. The grudging New Deal deficits ran only around $3 billion. The wartime deficits, the trigger of full employment, averaged more than $40 billion. Roosevelt, the Emperor of Empiricism, never learned the lesson Keynes tried to teach.

You sound like a person that has a reasonable understanding of politics and infrastructure, you're words reflect the mind of a person that still believes in america as it was meant to be, for the people, by the people. However, this is not the case.

Restore America? Please stop trying, because you cant, they cant. Everything is going according to their agenda. Please accept the fact that you have no influence whatsoever in the direction that the USA is going, neither to the other millions have any influence. If you want to have certain influence, you should Join the CIA, and become a terrorist. They seem to have had the most influence the last decade.

Have a link for this?


I find it interesting that the author leaves out Democrats in people we should ignore considering the fact that it's been Democrats in complete control of Congress for what, 4 years now? I also fail to see anything that explains why he thinks an unbalanced governmental budget with more money going out than we have coming in is a good thing.

reply to post by inforeal


The problem with that letter is that cutting the budget is not just merely a matter of common sense, but one of basic mathematics. The other problem is that the author is doing a pretend fictional budget. The money necessary for bridge repairs and waterworks repairs is worth getting loans for. Yet those expenses despite adding to hundreds of billions are little drops in the bucket compared to the real budget items like Social Security. Simple math shows Social Security will go broke and the author acts like it is merely opinion which is nonsense.

The Republicans may be wrong about quite a lot but the Tea Party is entirely spot on about their core value of downsizing government very dramatically.

I have been asking the smartest liberals on ATS what the most rich people should have to pay in taxes but they refuse to answer because they know that the very lowest brackets are already paying more than what they think the richest people should be paying.

Liberals need to be honest with them self and start protesting right with the tea party crowd because its a simple fact that government has grown to the point where it is economically strangling the country to death. Criminals can only rob so much from a person before their victims run out of money to be stolen and both end up worse off as a result.

This is nonsense.
The economy is not rocket science, though economists DO use some big words sometimes...
The government at all levels suck TOO much money out of the economy and produce NOTHING. They tax, penalize, arm themselves to the teeth while pushing for gun control, and take up space that could be put to PRODUCTIVE use.
The American people are productive, and would be just fine if they were not burdened to pay for every deadbeat that doesn't work, and to police the world for the big corporations to exploit. It would help too if the dam* government weren't doing everything possible for everyone else BUT the American people. Hey, here is an idea! How about protecting American jobs???
We absolutely DO NOT have a problem with productivity, but we do have a problem with parasites. Thank FDR for starting the massive expansion of oppression.

Why is it that people have to get distracted by the BS right left, Republicans Democrats rubbish?

Anyway - there is massive spending that could be cut by packing up every foreign military base, and sending all US soldiers home.

There is no reason not to do it - the occupation of Afghanistan is based on lies, as with Iraq - get out and let them sort it out - offer to relocate anyone who the US has put in danger due to its intervention - then get the hell out.

Park all the damn ships and planes - defend your own country for a change.

If the troops come home - I think Obama and Bush and Co. will be crapping themselves in fear though - a lot of vets will not take the lies and crap that has put them in harms way any longer.

It would save a trillion a year or more.

Originally posted by Jenna
I find it interesting that the author leaves out Democrats in people we should ignore considering the fact that it's been Democrats in complete control of Congress for what, 4 years now? I also fail to see anything that explains why he thinks an unbalanced governmental budget with more money going out than we have coming in is a good thing.

Yeah, I was scratching my head about that, also. I guess he thinks the Dems are the answer to everything.

Sooooooooo, I'm just trying to understand your post. You claim that we need to IGNORE the very people who are FOR free market capitalism so that we can achieve free market capitalsim? And, while paying attention to Democrats (as I assume you intend by disregarding Republicans), you believe we will somehow achieve the exact OPPOSITE of what the Democrat party has stood for for over the past 5 decades?

Whereas I completely agree with your summary of what we need, I find your methodology sorely lacking in either substance or reality. NEITHER political party will deliver your prescribed results. Drop your political pretenses and disregard the fallacy that is the two-party system and THERE you will find solutions.

Republicans always screw the economy over so that their FAT-CAT BUDDIES GET THEIR EXTRA FORTUNES AT THE EXPENSE OF MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA.

Its the same thing every time that there is A REPUBLICAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

And then the wealthy scum come on the forums and defend the republicans because doing so benefits their already FAT WALLETS to have their republicans in the office.

They screw the economy and the middle class EVERY TIME!!

Cant pass an unemployment extension but they CAN JUST THROW UNLIMITED AMOUNTS OF MONEY INTO HELPING OTHER COUNTRIES AND ALSO FOR WARS THAT THEIR FAT-CAT BUDDIES PROFIT FROM.

BUT SCREW THE AMERICAN WORKERS!!!!!! Great jobs Republican SCUM.

And now folks will be losing their homes, be unable to feed their children, and CRIME WILL RISE.

But to the republicans OUR money is ALWAYS WELL-SPENT WITHOUT LIMIT FOR WARS THAT NOBODY WANTS!!!!!.

edit, typos


[edit on 30-6-2010 by Baloney]

I wish it were as simple as fixing the economy by balancing a budget. The fact is there are so many things wrong with our current system of government, monetary, and politics. When we mention a fix to a single issue, this system is so unbalanced that arguments can be made on either side about the correct way forward. I say time to scrap the whole thing and come up with an entirely new system based on benefiting everyone.

You do have good points but your missing a few key facts.

It is true that politics were the reason for the depression and recession, but it was ALL the politicians and the president that made horrible knee jerk reactions.

MONEY MISMANAGEMENT
First, it was not Wall Street or Shares that created the depression. In part, it was the bad policy and management of money and credit. When government inflates the money and credit supply, interest rates will fall. Businesses invest this "easy money" in new production projects and a boom takes place in capital goods. As the boom matures, business costs rise, interest rates readjust upward and profits are squeezed. The easy-money effects thus wear off and the monetary authorities, fearing price inflation, slow the growth of, or even contract, the money supply. The Fed bloated the money supply by more than 60 percent from mid-1921 to mid-1929.

Bottom Drops Out
By 1928, the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates and choking off the money supply. For example, its discount rate (the rate the Fed charges member banks for loans) was increased four times, from 3.5 percent to 6 percent, between January 1928 and August 1929. The central bank took further deflationary action by aggressively selling government securities for months after the stock market crashed. For the next three years, the money supply shrank by 30 percent. As prices then tumbled throughout the economy, the Fed's higher interest rate policy boosted real (inflation-adjusted) rates dramatically.

Disintegration of the World Economy
Though modern myth claims that the free market "self-destructed" in 1929, government policy was the debacle's principal culprit. If this crash had been like previous ones, the hard times would have ended in two or three years at the most, and likely sooner than that. But unprecedented political bungling instead prolonged the misery for over 10 years.

ATS does not allow enough space to post the rest. However, click the link below to read the absolute truth to what created the depression. I can tell you that we are going down this same road right now with the current president and congress. Please, read the link. Click the "Great Myths of the Great Depression" when the page loads. Most of the above is not my work and I will not pass it to ATS as such, but I do believe it because it is supported by historical fact!

Click Here to Read!

Originally posted by Baloney
Republicans always screw the economy over so that their FAT-CAT BUDDIES GET THEIR EXTRA FORTUNES AT THE EXPENSE OF MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA.

Its the same thing every time that there is A REPUBLICAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

And then the wealthy scum come on the forums and defend the republicans because doing so benefits their already FAT WALLETS to have their republicans in the office.

They screw the economy and the middle class EVERY TIME!!

Cant pass an unemployment extension but they CAN JUST THROW UNLIMITED AMOUNTS OF MONEY INTO HELPING OTHER COUNTRIES AND ALSO FOR WARS THAT THEIR FAT-CAT BUDDIES PROFIT FROM.

BUT SCREW THE AMERICAN WORKERS!!!!!! Great jobs Republican SCUM.

And now folks will be losing their homes, be unable to feed their children, and CRIME WILL RISE.

But to the republicans OUR money is ALWAYS WELL-SPENT WITHOUT LIMIT FOR WARS THAT NOBODY WANTS!!!!!.

edit, typos

Note to the mad liberal: What branch of Government do the Republicans control right now? The White House, The Senate, The House of Representatives?

BTW when you tax the rich over a certain point, you take food out of the mouths of poor people. Does that make you feel good about yourself?

Do you realize that Obama is a Democrat? Do you realize he has been in office since January 2009?



[edit on 30-6-2010 by Carseller4]

Originally posted by Carseller4
Do you realize that Obama is a Democrat? Do you realize he has been in office since January 2009?
[edit on 30-6-2010 by Carseller4]

More importantly, do you realize that the Democrats have been in control of congress for the last 2 years of the Bush administration and now a year and a half with Obama?

The only thing we will be getting is the Shaft period. This guy sounds all noble yeah lets rebuild infrastructure, exactly what FDR did with the new deal and it inflated the economy. The OP is just same ole same ole... Doing what he suggests will not fix anything it will just hasten hyperinflation. Having said that we might as well do it while we still can cause it is all going to crash anyway.

Originally posted by Jenna
the fact that it's been Democrats in complete control of Congress for what, 4 years now?

A rhetorical theme? For those that aren't aware..

The Democrats took a majority in Congress when they were sworn in after the Nov election in January 2007.

They have had a Majority in Congress for 3.5 years.

Control? Nope..In the senate they only had a one seat advantage (51-49) allowing the GOP to Filibuster an insane number of times and for the first year they had a GOP POTUS who made good use of his Veto stamp.

Despite a technical majority, the Dems have not had "Control" of congress, thus Unemployment Benefits being held up, plus a never before number of Presidential nominations and appointees etc. etc.

You do know that? Right Jenna? Or are you just confused about why the Health Care bill took so long to pass and had to be mutilated to serve GOP interests? You just didn't understand the idea of Filibuster? Or how the GOP are using it to blockade EVERYTHING?

"Democrats in complete control of Congress ..." Seriously. Has there ever been a more egregious liberty with the truth for anyone that even remotely has followed politics in the past few years?

Feel free to tell me where I have been in the least bit innacurate and I will provide any links neccessary.

reply to post by inforeal


Harold Evans is an idiot.

Hoover did an epic amount of intervention that brought about the depression which was compounded by Roosevelt.

Harold Evans is ignorant on the actions Hoover took to head off the downturn.

Only a true idiot would believe we can spend our way out of a spending crisis.

A little history lesson on the great depression:

reply to post by maybereal11


What are you doing? Trolling my profile to track down all my recent posts? This is just getting ridiculous... I'm not answering the same questions in two different threads. Feel free to continue trolling though.

Reply to post by Jenna

The article posted is illogical at best.

It makes absolutely no sense.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

reply to post by Lemon.Fresh


If you mean the article in the OP, I agree.

Originally posted by maybereal11
They have had a Majority in Congress for 3.5 years.

Jenna said 4 years, it's actually 3.5. Wow, thanks for pointing out that massive mistake.

Originally posted by maybereal11
You do know that? Right Jenna? Or are you just confused about why the Health Care bill took so long to pass and had to be mutilated to serve GOP interests? You just didn't understand the idea of Filibuster? Or how the GOP are using it to blockade EVERYTHING?

Actually, it took so long because the Dems were rushing around, trying to find as many Congress dweebs that they could bribe with handouts to their states. I wonder how many millions of my tax dollars went these bribes.