{"id":4916,"date":"2009-06-12T08:16:04","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T13:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4916"},"modified":"2009-06-12T08:16:04","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T13:16:04","slug":"collateral-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4916","title":{"rendered":"Collateral Damage"},"content":{"rendered":"

One little factoid about the New Deal – buried in seventy years of media and education-establishment myths on the subject – was that it likely prolonged <\/em>the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

Getting a straight number out of economists is like getting a convincing “go ahead, punk, make my day” out of Clay Aiken – the best way to get thirty opinions about an economic issue is to put ten of them in a room together – but I’ve seen convincing cases that had the government kept their mitts completely off <\/em>the economy, the Big One would have ended by sometime in the late thirties.\u00a0 As it was, the New Deal and all the other government interventions pushed the Great Depression well into World War II, when the “Draft the Unemployed” program finally got everyone working and all the remaining factories humming.<\/p>\n

As Bogus Doug notes, history repeats:<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course reactionary cynics may note that it seems odd for the Obama administration to follow their prior attempt in “creating or saving” jobs by more of the same, when the economy actually shed 17% more jobs than said administration forecast would be lost if they did absolutely nothing to try to save them. This graph from Geoff at Innocent Bystanders illustrates this insolent observation of actual measurable employment numbers, rooted in the failed politics of the past which our Great Leader has promised to transcend:But happy members of Obama-nation know this ignores the important foundational work going on in delivering us into a new era of Hopeyness. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, as the saying goes, and you can’t “create or save” a few hundred thousand jobs without “collateral damage” to a few hundred thousand other jobs. That should just go without saying. I mean really people, does he have to spell everything out for you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole cynical thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One little factoid about the New Deal – buried in seventy years of media and education-establishment myths on the subject – was that it likely prolonged the Great Depression. Getting a straight number out of economists is like getting a convincing “go ahead, punk, make my day” out of Clay Aiken – the best way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}