Posted on 04/17/2006 5:46:17 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Thanks for the reminder that Marx has been wrong about everything.
your assumption is that everyone is doing backflips because GDP goes up. private sector middle class wages have fallen over the past several years. you are looking at only the macro stuff, real people see the micro-economy - their own. and this is why Bush has a 39% approval rating on the economy.
His type and later Fabianist seem to be gaining the upper hand as we speak.
Smoot Hawley had nothing to do with the depression - its a myth. it was monetary policy after the crash, and FDR's policies that extended it - only WWII ended it - and mostly because it resulted in the US bombing most of the world's productive capacity out of existence.
Why didnt tariffs have a negative impact on the US economy for the first 200 years? How do tariffs reduce GDP? In many ways, the pirce the middle class paid in lower tariffs was both a higher burden on their income taxes and also a reducion in wage growth.
Asd for most of the "growth" in the last few years, it has been related to runaway M3 growth via the FED, with t he true impacts of inflation kept at bay by both illegal(and legal H-1B) immigartion, and job outsourcing(not to mention both China and Japans minipulation of currency markets of the last few years to prop up the dollar), but in items that can not be outsourced or easily have cheap labor imported, such as energy, housing, medical and some other services, there indeed has been a major amount of inflation.
Also when one talks about growth, why didn the Plaza accord when it was in place from 85-95, have an negative impact on the nations economy. While it wasnt a tax per say, the Plaza accord, at the behest of the Reagan admin, reduced the value, inetantionally, of the dollar against the Yen, Mark and Pound, and it was a de facto tariff.
"Tariffs retard growth, period."
Nonsense. We had high tariffs from 1850-1960, the period of the greatest growth in US history.
You don't seem to understand that foriegn trade has been a small percentage of GDP from the mid 19th century to the 1960s.
Apparently the Chinese took the lesson home. If you can suppress the value of one's currency you can grow your industrial base at other's expense.
Hey, we cant forget that Limbaughs(and Kudlows) economic talking points fall apart when we look at the details, can we? Its fuuny that Kudlow in his low IQ rants(he is another person who I suspect has a room temperature IQ)talks about AVERAGE income rather than the more important MEDIAN income.
He can't put his head in the sand, it's already up his ass.
Steve Forbes as you might recall when he was running for president in '96 implied the depression was caused when immigration was reduced in 1925. It all comes down to cheap labor, that's what free trade and open borders are about.
And Milton Friedman blames the depresson on the Fed for reducing the money supply, and letting banks fail, including a Jewish bank for anti-Semitic reasons.
"Using manufactured statistic to lie is still a lie. The historical record does not change. Protectionist "DATA" is a compilation of out of context examples, Anecdotal evidence,half truths and knowing misstatements. Simply reposting it more times does not change the lies to truths"
How does this respond to my post? Which was as follows:
"What are you talking about? I ask you to explain your statement on Hoover and you respond with rhetoric. If you're going to quote history to support your odd economic views, back it up, or stick to verbiage."
Free Republic needs to start restricting posts on economic threads. No one under 25 or with an IQ of less than 100.
Average income is a better measure for overall economic health. Median income is a better measure for income equality issues, and how trickle down is doing. You are correct is suggesting that the two have diverged. The rich are getting very rich, and the bottom two fifths are treading water, unless the CPI is exaggerated, and it was, and is, in which case, there has been marginal progress.
The foreign trade component of the US economy was very small, until fairly recent times. Transportation costs, and other frictions, beyond tariffs, were the reason. What the US did profit from in the old days, back in the Robber Baron days, was a rather huge foreign investment, relatively speaking. Heck, it was something like 6% as recently as the 1970's. It is much higher now, but I don't know the figure.
There was a tv special on the 1980s that made a convincing case Fed policy was largely to blame but I don't believe it was a conspiracy or that it was done on purpose, it was simply mismanagment. Why would the ruling class jeopardize their status by doing such a thing, especially with the communists fomenting revolutions around the world?
"Steve Forbes as you might recall when he was running for president in '96 implied the depression was caused when immigration was reduced in 1925. It all comes down to cheap labor, that's what free trade and open borders are about."
LOL! I knew Forbes was for a flat tax, I didn't know he was for "open borders" and "one world".
Immigration drastically declined in 1914 due to WW I, even after the 1919 end it continued at a low level (due to unrest in Eastern Europe and lack of shipping) until the 1924 restriction act. We then continued to restrict immigration until the 1965 act was passed (with the support of Ted Kennedy).
I am not suggesting it was. But Friedman wrote that the match was allowing some Jewish bank in NY to fail. The Fed did not know how to manage the money supply in the context of massive bank failures. It just wasn't in their manual.
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