24 September 2018

Great Depression 2.0

You might have noticed that starting in 2007 or so there was a pretty bad recession.

One that persisted pretty much until 2016-2017.

It had all the earmarks to get as big and as bad as The Great Depression had been.

What ended The Great Depression was World War 2 coming along and suddenly everyone not even giving lip service to The National Recovery Act and associated policies any more.

Once the war was over, everyone was happy to keep ignoring it and the economic boom of the 1950's is still talked about with some awe.

I've said it many times, and I didn't originate the theory either, that there's damn little a government can do to stimulate the overall economy; but there's absolutely gobs and gobs of things it can do to suppress it.

The FDR administration tried all kinds of things that just made it worse, or prolonged it without making things better.

His death near the end of World War 2 essentially left us free to try someone else at the head and to make a different approach.  Laissez Faire is a good way to express the post-war boom.

Why didn't our second depression get as bad?  Why aren't we still suffering under it?

Another legacy of FDR is The 22nd Amendment.  I think that it finally did what they intended in 1947 and by forcing out the sitting president (whom probably would have been reelected) for new blood allowed a change in policies and getting government out of the way of business and letting the invisible hand do its visible work.

1 comment:

  1. I fully agree - despite what some people (mostly socialists and Liberal bureaucrats) think, the government can't actually improve society as a whole since it only takes from people; it doesn't produce anything on it's own.

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