8 thoughts on “Tax And Spend”

  1. The idea of borrowing and spending your way to prosperity is as stupid as drinking your way to sobriety. It isn’t going to happen.

    One of the reasons why we’ll never see Obama’s college transcripts would likely be poor (or no) grades for economics, history and especially math.

  2. The idea of borrowing and spending your way to prosperity is as stupid as drinking your way to sobriety. It isn’t going to happen.

    It already did; see 1939-1946.

  3. It already did; see 1939-1946.

    That reveals a profound lack of understanding of what happened economically in those years. We didn’t become prosperous until afterward, when we stopped all of the spending (hint: the Republicans took the Congress that year) and people who had been off at war came home to start producing.

  4. We didn’t become prosperous until afterward, when we stopped all of the spending (hint: the Republicans took the Congress that year) and people who had been off at war came home to start producing.

    You need to check your history. GDP more than doubled, from $92 billion in 1939 to $220 billion in 1944. Unemployment fell from 17% in 1939 to 1% in 1944. Our economic situation improved dramatically, thanks to government spending of borrowed money.

  5. Only if you count arms production in the GDP. Which one can, but it doesn’t mean that we grew more prosperous. Gasoline and food aren’t rationed in a prosperous economy. But perhaps you believe that war is the health of the state. Many fascists do.

  6. Tax and spend is not a jobs plan

    And yet tax and borrow and spend did drop unemployment from 17% in 1939 to 1% in 1944. That’s a fabulously effective jobs plan.

    Only if you count arms production in the GDP.

    Which further proves my point. We would have been even better off if the money had been spent on roads, bridges, trains, dams, cars and houses rather than on bombs and barracks. But even spending borrowed money on weapons to be blown up was effective in putting everyone back to work and breaking out of the depression.

  7. No, what “put everyone back to work” was conscripting them and sending them overseas, creating a labor shortage at home. But the notion that this was good for the economy or wealth creation is ludicrous. But then, people like you don’t seem to give a damn about wealth creation — all you care about is the redistribution of scarcity.

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