Saturday, December 06, 2008
Depression, Bad. Government involvment, worse.
Here
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=a6b24ac7-888e-4501-9e24-539629b30854&t=c
Thomas Sowell gives a serving of wisdom that is being ignored by (1) politicians clamoring for more government intervention in the economy, and (2) CEO's with their hands out for tax-payer $'s with governmental micromanagement strings attached.
...Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.
Many of those who have, over the years, praised the fact that this was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for trying to get the country out of a depression do not ask what seems like the logical follow-up question: Did this depression therefore end faster than other depressions where the government stood by and did nothing?
The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.
Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.
With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=a6b24ac7-888e-4501-9e24-539629b30854&t=c
Thomas Sowell gives a serving of wisdom that is being ignored by (1) politicians clamoring for more government intervention in the economy, and (2) CEO's with their hands out for tax-payer $'s with governmental micromanagement strings attached.
...Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.
Many of those who have, over the years, praised the fact that this was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for trying to get the country out of a depression do not ask what seems like the logical follow-up question: Did this depression therefore end faster than other depressions where the government stood by and did nothing?
The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.
Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.
With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.
